Where in the world is this?
Tahiti? Nope. Malibu? Not even close. Bondai? Sorry. Waikiki, maybe? Half a world away. It’s Cromer, of course (where else)?
I took this photo today, about mid-morning, on a blue-flag beach, on a blisteringly sunny Sunday at the end of June. The beach was combed. Holes were dug. Sandcastles were made. The sea was warm enough for paddling.
And apart from the Gees, there was hardly a living soul. But don’t all rush at once: we’d like to keep it to ourselves.
So when I am stuck on an interminable train journey in or out of London, I’ll just think of this photo and the fact that this view is just a twenty-minute stroll from my front door.
Bondai would be the famous beach at Kyoto, which is a full scale replica of the Sydney beach Bondi?
John, I bow to your superior beach-bummery.
Once more unto the beach, dear friends.
We shall fight them in the breaches.
And breeches.
That looks lovely. I may not rush, but that looks a good beach to visit.
Meanwhile, this is less than 20 minutes from my house, taken this evening:
~ (fullsize here ) ~It’s not bad either. People that say London’s ugly sometimes aren’t just looking in the right places… But if you don’t look, London’s intolerable. I imagine Cromer would be too, if you didn’t make at least some effort to enjoy what’s there.
Scott – I agree with you about London, in that it can change so rapidly. One minute you are next to an ugly, stinking, noisy road, and then you just go up an alley or through a door and you can be in a beautiful garden square. Best seen on foot.
What I like about Cromer is that it’s a town with integrity. Ordinary people live there, and it does ordinary things, irrespective of the people who come to visit it. Cromer is a little shabby round the edges, even scruffy. In no way is it picture-postcard pretty. It has a certain workaday, honest grit, which appeals to me.
I recognize that spot on the beach! Lovely!
I don’t think I took you to this particular bit of beach, Bora: to the cognoscenti, this is Cromer East Beach, on the way to Overstrand. You and I went to the West beach, towards East Runton — but there is a degree of self-similarity, I’ll admit. :)
Now, here’s a hot item of news I’m now at liberty to impart. As of this morning the Maison Des Girrafes has an annexe in the form of a hut on Cromer’s idyllic and rarely patronized East Beach. It’s the dark blue one in this picture, taken looking westwards towards Cromer Pier, which you can just make out in the distance.
Looking eastwards you’d see the view I showed at the top of this post, more or less.
While we were returning from our walk on the beach yesterday (when I blogged the beach view above) we noticed that this hut was up for rent. Memorizing the phone number on the notice we hied home as fast as the buttered proverbials, phoned the number, and arranged a meet on the beach at lunchtime today.
Well, we’re now proud tenants of the fabulous des res you see above, and in the coming weeks we’ll trick it out with camping gear, buckets and spades and so on, including our camping stove and kettle.
I can already see myself taking the laptop down there. It would make a wonderful writer’s retreat. Now, if only I could pick up a wireless signal, we could meet there for Blogging On The Beach. Who needs the stuffy olf Royal Institution?
if only I could pick up a wireless signal, we could meet there for Blogging On The Beach.
Wifi lasts fairly short range, but if you can find friendly folk between your house and the beach, you can have relay stations?
Mobile internet is up to/circa £30 per month for a dedicated dongle, or you can patch it into your phone.
Your next book, Henry, should be an exploration of what science has been discovered in beach huts. There has to be plenty.
Mobile internet is up to/circa £30 per month for a dedicated dongle, or you can patch it into your phone.
Could be worth looking into, though mobile signals are rather wayward on Cromer Beach. Mrs Gee can pick up email on her blackberry, but can’t get an 02 mobile signal, which is strange: I can get a decent signal on my Talk2Me or Chatterbox or whatever I use these days.
Perhaps I can go to the beach hut to revise my Lab-Gothick novel By The Sea.
I’m still pinching myself, though. Available beach huts in Cromer are as rare as
rockinghorse shita very rare thing: when we moved here 18 months ago we put ourselves down on the Council Beach-Hut Waiting List, which is rather like putting one’s son’s name down for Eton while he’s still in utero. We learned that we were 109th on the waiting list. Continents drift apart to an aprpeciable degree before your number comes up. And here was one, for private rent. Now. We took our chance.I wanted to write about this yesterday before we were formally in possession of the key and £££ had changed hands, but Mrs Gee forbade it in case the Gods were Angry. Superstitions may be airy-fairy nonsense, but the expression on Mrs Gee’s face was real enough, so I kept schtum.
My grandma used to live in Dersingham, near Kings Lynn, and I have lots of happy memories of the beach at Hunstanton (known as Hunting Stanting in my family for reasons that remain obscure). Is Cromer similar in that you can walk out to sea for half a mile and still only be up to your knees in water?
I wanted to write about this yesterday before we were formally in possession of the key and £££ had changed hands, but Mrs Gee forbade it in case the Gods were Angry.
That’s just good risk management – avoiding the damage to your reputation of having to issue a retraction, and then finding mr RPG suing you as he’d already ordered his Victorian swimming pantaloons from eBay.
Is Cromer similar in that you can walk out to sea for half a mile and still only be up to your knees in water?
No – it gets deep rather quickly.