In Search of England

Beyond Cromer, from Cley-next-the-sea – which Norfolk men pronounce Clye – the level salt marshes run for miles towards a thin ridge of yellow sand, beyond which is the ocean. The tide goes out for miles and returns at a canter. It is desolate. The wind whispers. The sea birds cry. No men but naturalists disturb the solitude of the salt marshes.

The wind blows through the miles of sea lavender, great lakes of pink and purple, and the gold clouds pile up over the edge of the sea and roll landwards like great galleons. The light, falling on this flat land squarely, intensifies with colour so that you cry out at sudden glories in the painful knowledge that nothing but water-colour can tell the story truly. The sea marshes are full of life. A blue grey-grey heron lifts noiselessly above the green reeds and sails away with a slow beat of great wings, his long legs held stiff behind him. He settles. With keen eyes you can see his head lifted to the level of the reeds watching you.

White gulls sit in rows in the shells of wrecked fishing boats. There is a sudden flurry of white and a great screaming! Up they go in the air, orange feet tucked into soft white undersides, wheeling, turning, poised in the air motionless, then down, down like white darts with a sudden outflinging of orange feet; for the tide is coming in, rushing in, swirling in up creeks and the twisty channels! One minute the oozy banks are dry; the next they are alive with a brown snake of water that writhes and bubbles, lapping the bright fringe of samphire at the edges.

And it is lonely, with the water lapping and the birds crying and the wind pressing the blue thrift backwards from the sea, for this is a strange No Man’s Land: it is not land and it is not water, but a queer beautiful region half land, half water; and it seems to you that the sea fights for it daily and the grass defends it. When you turn your back to the salt marshes you see, far away, flat meadows and green land and villages, clear-etched, and grey flint church towers rising above the trees. To the left and to the right a thin line of woodland is the colour of the bloom on a purple grape.

All along the coast at the edge of the great salt marsh are curious little villages which were once seaports. Huge flint churches in desolate meadows tell you that yesterday this coast was alive with men and commerce. There is Blakeney, whose church has an extra tower, once a lighthouse, now eloquently ruined; there is Cley; there is Salthouse; there is Weybourne, in whose ancient bay the wild-fowl nest; there is Wells-next-the-sea – all old seaports which the sea has deserted.

This is a curious part of the world. A region barely touched by tourists. A region rich in history and packed full of atmosphere. You can stand on the salt marshes towards the end of the day, with the sun mellow over the windy fields of sea lavender, and it takes little to imagine the Viking ships beaching on the distant strand - the big, red bearded men wading to shore, dragging their great double-bladed swords through the purple marshes, shading their eyes to the distant land.

There is a melancholy over the sea marshes quite impossible to describe. You feel that it is good to be alone here, good to wander over the featureless land, listening to the shrill crying of the birds and to the sound of the wind in the grass.

In 1926 a young journalist named H.V. Morton took a light-hearted motor-car journey around England. Setting off from London in his bull-nosed Morris, which he named Maud, he quickly became enchanted with the romance of the open road. He then wrote In Search of England, which describes his journey and became the best-loved UK travel book of the 20th century. (Cley Windmill)