Ancient County Borders and the Calorific Value of Mud!

After a period of walking in what I can only describe as lifeless prairie of West Suffolk and Newmarket, I then hit the wonderful heaths and forests of the Brecks and the start of the Waveney valley more on that later. The skies in West Suffolk were wonderful and villages and hospitality was great, it was just too lifeless for me. Industrial farming has taken its toll over the last 30 years. I know farmers are responding to society needs etc. but some more than others also put effort into margins, corners and hedges, creating a bit of a mosaic in the monoculture to give nature a chance and I thank them for it, this important part of farming and the European grants to enable this are essential.

So in this blog I decided to have a bit of a change and go to the other end of the Angles Way to the ancient Norfolk and Suffolk Border and South Breydon Water. In times past the border used to be the River Waveney and Yare confluence. South Breydon used to be Suffolk and North Breydon Norfolk. Many a battle of landowners, councils and merchants have been fought in words, taxes, levy’s and even fisticuffs on this border in the past.

Taxes on traffic using the River Yare to Norwich caused Lowestoft to be disgruntled and Norwich to be annoyed, Lake Lothing and the connection to the sea at Lowestoft were cut, deepened and changed and the ‘New Cut’ a canal from St Olives to Reedham in an attempt to take trade from Gt Yarmouth, successful but troublesome, always silting up and needing maintenance. Gorleston transferred to Norfolk in 1889 and Burgh Castle, Belton, Fritton, St Olives and Hopton finally in 1974.

So I am walking the ancient border of Suffolk I hope that counts! Starting at the old town wall tower in Gt Yarmouth (the North Tower) I walked to the Haven Bridge to get to the south of the town and what would

have been Suffolk! The current Haven Bridge completed and opened by the Prince of Wales in the 1930’s was the only road crossing till the 80’s when the new bridge was opened on the line of the old railway bridge taking goods and passengers to London via Belton , Beccles and the East Suffolk line.

Walking through what was Cobholm Island, now of course houses but originally a salt pan island separated from Gt Yarmouth by streams long since gone, however people from here still call themselves Cobholm Islanders. This was all once Suffolk. This is all a very old part of the two counties, people will remember the Herring industry, Yarmouth a major port for timber from Latvia, Estonia, and Georgia big three masters bringing the timber from the Baltic for use in building all over Suffolk and Norfolk. Gt Yarmouth of course was also the first English town bombed by a Graf Zepplin. Bombs fell near St Peters Church in the south of the town causing fatalities.

Eventually, after walking through Cobholm you emerge under the old railway line now the A12 onto a playing field and what was the old municipal dump now of course grassed over and landscaped.

The Angles Way takes you up the flood defences on the south of Breydon. Breydon Water is our most easterly estuary. It is internationally important for wintering wild fowl and waders. Some people look over

Breydon and see just one thing – mud! Yes there is a lot of it, its roughly 4 miles long and 1 mile wide but it is the biggest estuary between the Wash and the Thames so is vitally important for birds.

 Each square metre of mud has the calorie value to birds of 18 Mars Bars to us, full of worms, invertebrates and other food for birds. The value of Breydon has been decreasing over the last 30 years with the loss of soft backed crabs, rag worm and lung worm decline, plus the decline of shell fish, fish, eels and other food values.

A strange fish called the Smelt, used to have a ‘run’ into Breydon in the

late summer from the North Sea. A strange fish smelling of Cucumber when you pick it up, a white fish caught by local men and shipped in salted boxes straight to London as a delicacy, packed onto the train at night it was in the fish markets by morning, a lucrative addition to the household income before the WW2 that’s for sure; Smelt are still in the North Sea but numbers are small and have no real commercial value in these parts now.

The walk up the flood wall was stunning, sunny hot and a breeze blowing from the west. The channel on Breydon for boats is clearly marked by red and green posts. 7/8ths of the mud is an RSPB reserve. Breydon has a real history, one of the earliest declared nature reserves in 1888 a local nature reserve the first in Norfolk in 1968.

Arthur Patterson one of the mystical locals, born in the rows of Yarmouth was a peddler, salesman and then a truant officer. He wrote the first definitive guide to the site Wild Fowlers and Poachers in 1929. Strangely the book was typed and manuscripted  by the next generation of mystical naturalist of the Boards - Ted Ellis.

My first job when I left college was to work for Coypu Research helping to set up the Coypu eradication scheme in the early 80’s Coypu or Nutria were brought from South America for the fur trade and they took to the Broads as their home.

I was a ‘field worker’ and together with those wonderful companions Cyril Clarke my boss and Jenny Thomas my fellow trapper. We used to occasionally take Coypu to Ted Ellis for his dogs, but he was partial to the odd bit of coypu meat. Coypu are of course no more in the UK.

Back to the walk, as I could go on for hours about the history of this site. The sea walls have just been up graded across the whole of Broadland as part of a 20 year scheme to make a great vantage point for viewing the estuary.

Boats and holidaymakers constantly chugged by and reminded me of the great website called Literary Norfolk with writings and poems of Norfolk. I saw this one about Breydon and loved it I hope they don’t mind me repeating it here credit to them.

Breydon captured by Hugh Money-Coutts in his 1919 verse:

  

'On Breydon Water, when the tide is out,

 The channel bounds no sailorman can doubt.

 Starboard and port, the miry banks reveal

 Where safety lies beneath his cautious keel.

 But when the flood has wiped the water clean,

  - Hiding the muddy haunts where seagulls preen

 Their wings, and shake their heads - black pillars mark

 The channel's edge for each adventuring bark.

 Beware; the channel shifts, and now and then

 a post deceives the hapless wherrymen.'

I looked over the estuary to see the Norwich to Gt Yarmouth train via Reedham and I could see it stopping at Berney Marshes Halt the smallest station in England. Four trains a day stop here in the summer and the

walk from Berney to Gt Yarmouth on the north bank is equally as beautiful as the south. Gt Yarmouth is one of those rare sea side towns that boasts two railway lines; do we make enough of them I ask myself as I walk on, maybe we needn’t spend £78 million on a dual carriageway?

 On the left I overlook the Burgh Castle marshes, grazed by a mix of cattle. The collective name for all these marshes is Halvergate Marshes, a huge grassland complex which was once of course open to the sea - more about that later. The marshes produce some of the best beef. The grasses and herb-rich sward put good weights onto the cattle. Draining of the marshes was once the job of wind power and the wind drain pumps remain all over the sky line. One does wonder if the protests for these majestic mills was as loud as some today against modern wind turbines which you can also see from the wall.

Draining of water then turned diesel and finally electric, not only putting overhead cables into an open

landscape but also being so efficient shifting tonnes of water per minute, lowering the water tables. This of course meant some farmers thought the best thing was to plough and grow wheat, and so one of the biggest conservation battles ensued. The debate raged and national organisations such as RSPB and Friends of the Earth fought to keep the open grass landscapes. Some hundreds of acres were lost to the arable crops but the government scheme the Environmentally Sensitive Area or ESA’s were born here with payments to farmers not to plough but to graze and to keep water tables high.

Andrew Lees of Friends of the Earth and Dr Martin George, two of the stalwarts of the battle, were key figures in the success of the ESA, plus many others too many to mention, (maybe they should all come out in my memoirs?) fought hard to keep our Broadland marshes; one of those Andrew Lees, killed in the Far East, has his ashes scattered near Berney Marsh Mill.

Today, as the photo shows, wind drainage and pumping still exists. Pioneered by the RSPB and by a wonderful chap Mr Dave Barrett created these new-style wind pumps from a Dutch design. The first ones, using an old Ford Escort 1600cc gearbox, reenergised sustainable and green pumping on the Halvergate marshes and all these pumps are from Dave Barrett’s design, clearly a great wetland manger.

The journey continued to the confluence of the Yare and the Waveney. Great slow moving rivers but with a lot of water and consequently a good flow increased by the tidal influence, therefore not a point you would want to fall from your boat!

Here I saw a Marsh Harrier quartering over the reed bed and marshes. Is funny to think that in 1974 there were only one pair of Marsh Harriers left in UK and they were at Minsmere in Suffolk. Suffolk is a monumental place when it comes to rare birds and bringing them back from the brink of extinction; Avocets, Marsh Harriers Bearded Tit, Bitterns Stone Curlew to name a few, so Suffolk is very much a County that should be proud of its bird life.

The views from here show the huge vista which was the open estuary in Roman times. Great Yarmouth didn’t exist and the sea came into the River Bure Valley probably via Winterton about 15 miles away as well as what is not the Yare. Hence Burgh Castle a huge Roman fort, on one side of this vast Estuary with Caister, probably originally the other Roman fort on the north shore. Near Norwich the great Roman Town of Venta Icenorum the Roman capital of this part of the world now at Caistor St Edmund south of Norwich.

Some say it was serviced from the sea and the two forts described were there as protection from invaders.

Burgh Castle is a great place. Not only offering great views over the miles of grazing marshes but full of history and memories, worth a pause here to let your imagination flow and wander. You can almost hear the roman voices some Latin, and the boats unloading and loading their trade and the soldiers, plus the wind whipping around the cattle – it’s worth just standing for a moment to let it all sink in.

Leaving the fort I continued up the river Waveney passing reeds taller than I to my left with tantalising glimpses of Berney Mill. Passing the now holiday camps and the boat yards you eventually turn inland towards Fritton and another Forestry Plantation on what was originally heathland. After the First World War, when timber was scarce, lots of trees were planted on ‘wasteland’ or ‘sheep badlands’, the Brecks, North of Norwich, the Suffolk Coast and Fritton. This land has lovely windblown sand if you look at the base of the trees under the leaf litter and areas of erosion, dark grey glacial washed sand. Of course the next episode of this land is to be quarried for sand and gravel to feed the voracious house building machine.

I walked back along footpaths sheltered by trees across farmland to what was the little village of Belton, now a commuter village growing as they do. I found the Kings Head Pub with the bus stop to take me back to Yarmouth. Within 10 minutes the bus came along. I have to say I do like the fact you can text the code on the bus stop and you get a text back again with all bus times - a neat invention!

A great walk with a difference through so much history. Natural History, built history peoples history and peoples influence from Roman building, invasions, medieval building, wartime raids and changes to modern building and influencing. That’s why I love walking around Suffolk and Norfolk so much it charges your imagination, as there’s so much to see and so much to learn. I hope I’m inspiring you to also get out there and walk; trust me, it does you a world of good mentally and physically and inspires your grey matter and at my age that is no bad thing J

If you’d like to take up the Healthy Ambitions One Million Steps Challenge which starts on 16^th September you can find out more here http://www.healthyambitions.org.uk/onemillionsteps/l/ and sign up for your free Pedometre and Water Bottle. 

Bird list

Common gull

 Black headed gull

Herring Gull

Lesser Black backed gull

Common tern

Turnstone

Sanderling

Avocet

Shelduck

Curlew Sandpiper

Greenshank

Redshank

Hobby

Marsh Harrier

Green wood pecker

Gt Spotted Woodpecker

House sparrow

Great tit

Blue tit

Lapwing

Egret

Grey Heron

Meadow pipit

Sedge warbler

Swallow

Sand Martin

alvergate Marshes as the collect