Sunny Hunny

It is a Sunday and promises gloriously sunny weather, so I decide to head out to Hunstanton for the day.

There is a direct bus from King’s Lynn that runs once an hour, and I turn up at the bus garage 10 minutes early, and there are already a few people waiting, including a family with 3 small children, who are getting increasingly excited as we wait! The bus arrives and the excitement is too much - one of the youngsters squirms away and jumps aboard the bus in front of everyone else. The ride is mostly uneventful, but we do get into a traffic jam as we approach the town, and are delayed by about 20 minutes. As we get closer to the centre, I notice the big parking lot next to the fun fair - and remember my trip here a few weeks ago when it was cold and damp, and there were only 4 cars in the lot, and a duck and ducklings wondering around. Today I’m hoping the duck found a quieter place to be, as the lot is nearly full, and it’s only 10 o’clock!

Getting off the bus, I’m reminded that the tourist board call this Sunny Hunny - and it IS gloriously sunny, and the sky and the sea are amazingly blue. But. It is still windy! I’m just wearing shorts and a tee shirt, and feel momentarily cool - but not for long as I start to mingle with the crowds that head out for the beach.

Hunstanton used to have a pier - this went into disrepair and suffered from a fire some time ago, but where it used to be is a building with amusements and really looking like it should have a pier attached to it! Nearing this I see lots of motor bike - I mean A LOT of them - many people in biker leathers sitting in the sun and mingling with the crowd of day trippers. Walking past these I start off along the promenade - and this has a real “English seaside” feel to it - lots of stalls selling seafood, ice creams and candy floss, hot dogs and coffee, and the inevitable gift shops with cheap souvenirs and buckets and spades - and sun screen and wind breaks, both of which are selling well! On the beach, they even have an area of pony rides, something I’ve not seen for years!



Walking along I see an amphibious vehicle near the beach, and tracks in the sand looking like it comes and goes - oh wow! a “duck tour”!! Yes indeed, they use these old WW2 landing craft for tours, and there is a tour of the Wash due to start in 15 minutes, so I buy a ticket and wait. Soon I see the craft out in the water coming closer - the “Wash Monster”. It comes right up to the promenade, and the front opens down to allow passengers to just walk straight off the craft onto shore.



We soon board and are off for our tour - just a 30 minute ride - that drives for a long way, before it has to engage its propeller and become a craft. Its crew give the appearance of older generation “sea dog” types, and it’s quite odd to see one doing the “the exits are this way” hand signals which one normally see airline stewardesses doing! This trip takes us down to Old Hunstanton, and gives us a great view of the cliffs, which are pretty amazing with a white top part, and then a very clear divide line to dark reds below. We also get a view of a much newer structure - the big turbines that are the entrance to the wash, harvesting some of the wind - at last! A good use for it!



Returning back to land, I start to walk back the way I came, and along the shore line towards the cliffs. As I go I see that the tide is going out and that more and more sand is becoming visible, as well as some of the sandbanks that are a feature of this area of coast. Looking back, I see the Wash Monster has started on a new cruise, this time out to the sandbanks, where people can get out and walk in the middle of the sea!

Eventually the promenade gives way to a normal road, and then I go down onto the beach itself - and my sandals come off so I can feel the cool sand between my toes. In this part of the beach there are moss covered rocks at low tide with tiny pools between them, before you get to the sand and then - eventually - the sea. This is a great area for adventurous young children, and the air is filled with excited squeals as another 5 year old comes face to face with a live crab for the first time. They may only be tiny crabs, but they are alive and move, and I just have to smile at the excitement they cause. I walk way out to the sea, crossing areas of sand that are alternatively dry and wet - you can really see how the sandbanks develop, and how people can get cut off on the sand banks from time to time.

I climb back onto the path, dry my feet as best I can and put my sandals back on, and start looking for somewhere to have lunch. I can see a café on the cliff above me, and a path there, so I climb this, and although it looks like a nice place, and has a decent menu, I’d have to be indoors, and it’s much too nice for that, so I start down the path back to the town. There are a couple of other places that look OK, but I decide that what I really want is a picnic, so in the end I go into a supermarket and buy a ready made meal and a drink, and come back out onto the grass above the “pier”, and sit there to have my late lunch.



This is blissful - sunny, warm and relaxing, and when I finish eating I just lie there and watch the bikers, the people playing ball, and the sea gulls swoop and glide in the breeze. After a while I realise that I’m actually getting too hot, and maybe a bit sun-burned, so I spend a while looking round the souvenir shops, before heading back to the bus station to get the bus back to Lynn. It’s quite late arriving, and I’m really hot and bothered by the time it arrives, and then it is further delayed by an “incident” on the main road back home - but I sit and doze on and off and watch the countryside go past, and get home eventually.

Hunstanton is a fun place for a day out - and I’d like to go and watch the sun set into the sea one day, which is not something you can often do from an east coast resort!







NOTES OF EXPLANATION.
Hunstanton is on a piece of water called “The Wash”, which feeds into the North Sea. The Wash appears like a large indentation in the coastline of the map of eastern England, it’s formed by a large bay with three roughly straight sides meeting at right angles, each about 15 miles (25 kilometres) long. It has a long sandy beach which is very flat, so when the tide goes out it goes out a LONG way. One interesting geographical thing about Hunstanton is that, although it’s on the east coast, because of the curve of The Wash, it actually faces west! For anyone interested, here is the Wiki listing for The Wash: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wash