It was about time we took a walk on the beach. New Year’s day seemed like an ideal opportunity. You know what it’s like, the heaped dinners, optics of spirits and enough sugary stuff to double the share price at Tate & Lyle. The coast at Happisburgh was calling. The problem is it was calling every other person in Norfolk too … and their dogs! Big dogs, little dogs, running dogs, leaping dogs, single dogs, multiple dogs. You get the picture; it was heaving. We’d brought camera and bins. I now wondered why.
Normally we walk south east along the sand but we decided to walk north west at the back of the sea defences. Apart from a lone couple it was surprisingly abandoned. The cliffs might hold something. We had walked less than half a mile before a couple of birds dropped off the boulder clay and magically disappeared among the pebbles all around us; Snow Buntings. Distantly at sea the odd Gannet and Scoter flew through. Closer there were good numbers of Red throated Divers and among them a lone piebald individual with ruddy great white thigh patches and a dagger of an un-tilted bill; a Black throated Diver.
Things were looking up.
Letter From Norfolk 