Thursday 14 December – Sandringham and Hunstanton

Where’s Bertie? He’s at King’s Lynn Caravan and Camping Park at a cost of £22.

Weather: Just a couple of periods of light mizzly rain. Cold when walking into the wind (unsurprising, really, in mid-December.

An early start, partly to put right the previous two days’ failures to use the showers, and secondly because I wanted a walk before we left.

With the latest departure time from the campsite being 11am (a bit strict at this time of year when all bar three of the pitches sat empty, and why do campsites need a 2-hour empty window on their pitches anyway? It’s not like they have to clean them and change linen as you would in a hotel.), we weren’t at leisure for the longer ‘to the beach’ route, so opted to wander through the Sandringham Estate, lying just across the road.

Pleasant woodland

Back at Bertie, we soon had the departure chores done and off to Hunstanton we went. Our first walk was to the scant remains of St Edmund’s Chapel, following the Wolf Trail, and completely forgetting that I’d intended to take us to a different, but nearby, point of interest.

Lighthouse, minus light, viewed through the doorway of the chapel remains.

Same snap, but taken in 1895 when less remained of the chapel than there is today (hmmmm).

None of the cafes along the seafront was open (and all of the car parks were empty, making it obvious why it’s not worth them opening), so it was clear that we needed to go into town to find refreshment. We stopped at the first open place we found and had it to ourselves. Even as we sat there, we suspected that if we had walked just around the corner we would have found the bustling place where all the locals go. It turned out that there were several, but no matter – we shared a tasty XL pork and chilli sausage roll, and the most ridiculously large slab of rocky road ever seen. I’m no stranger to cake eating, but have no idea how one person could get through a whole serving; I ate a quarter and took another quarter away with me to eat later.

Back at Bertie, after a bit of shopping in Tesco having used their (also largely empty) car park, we considered where to go next, and opted simply to move Bertie to some roadside parking we’d spied on the cliffs, have a cup of tea, then take a walk through Old Hunstanton.

It was as we drank tea and did a crossword that I remembered that I’d failed to deliver on the shipwreck that was supposed to be the objective of our first outing. As it turned out, it’s not visible from the cliffs, so we walked beyond them, down onto the beach, then back along it, nearly overshooting our objective, with it being so well camouflaged into its surroundings.

The Steam Trawler Sheraton, built in 1907, and commandeered by the Royal Navy for use in the first world war, then used again the second world war. It was then painted yellow and moored for target practice, but it broke its moorings in a storm and washed up here in 1947. Mick was disappointed at how little remains (when I said ‘ship wreck’ he anticipated something more substantial). I was impressed at how much remains after knocking on for 80 years of being battered by the tide and both getting saltily wet and drying out on a daily basis.

Back at Bertie having walked a total, including the Sandringham walk, of 10.5km, we declared that was enough activity for one day and drove over to this campsite, a few miles S of King’s Lynn. As tempting as it was to have another night at Pinecones, this site is £6 per night cheaper, is nearer to where we’re going tomorrow, and has everything we need.  It’s not as nice to look at (it looks to me as if most of the motorhomes and caravans around us are here on a seasonal basis and being used for residential purposes), but as it was soon dark, appearances don’t matter.