The enormous power of nature feeding and calming our souls

Today’s walk had to be shorter than normal as I had a very important meeting; I had to be on Southwold Pier by 11.00am to be photographed with a couple of my walking supporters Robert Gough who owns the Pier and Terry Hunt the Editor of the East Anglian Daily Times and Evening Star. Terry has been out for walks with me before at Ickworth, I remember as part of the National Trust Walking Festival. This was fantastic for me, as Director at the Trust, it meant I had a good excuse to walk for a week, meeting people to walk with at many of the Trusts locations. Now I do the same but for different reasons to help promote peoples general health and well-being and to help Healthy Ambitions with its One Million Steps Challenge which launched last Monday.

To begin today’s walk I left the car at Walberswick Church.  Walberswick is a lovely village nestling in the Suffolk Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and its called that for a reason, it is outstanding! Walberswick, I’m told its Saxon for wyk or sheltered harbour and Walbert from a notable or powerful chaps name of the time, probably the land owner. It is great looking into the history of the names of villages of the UK it is worth going into your local book shop to get a book on the history of place names, autumn and winter dark nights are coming, reading that and looking at maps in winter inspires you to look forward to spring and summer walking for the next year I hope.

Turning left into Palmers Lane you are treated to some beautiful old cottages and lovely gardens before vistas of the coast and Blythe valley no wonder this is the area of outstanding beauty.

Crossing the river by the footbridge and turning right brings you to the start of the Southwold Harbour walk. The Harbour Inn on the left is the site of many a meeting of friends. Its where the Powell family meets the Jones Family  after Christmas day for fish and chips and a bracing walk round Southwold so happy memories for today’s walk. I love this harbour walk. Always good to chuckle at the cars parked just that little bit too far forward as the tide comes in, no real damage just very wet feet when they want to get to the driver’s seat.  The wall of the Harbour Inn has marks to show the height of the tide in history a stark reminder about sea level rise and what the next mark could be! Walking east up the harbour road is a pleasure. The sights and  smells of boats and people are a pleasure to watch; the mix of a sailing cleat with a pair of Hunter wellies,  posh Guernsey in the local ships chandlers shop, see the old pitched shed or railway carriage selling fresh fish and produce - its all tremendous. The mix of buildings, sheds and lean-to’s reminds you of the gently eccentric British people and long may that last. Southwold means so much to so many people local and visitors alike.

Erosion and the power of the sea are never far away on this coast and the groynes, harbour walls and the like are under constant discussion and repair. Should we? Shouldn’t we? is a constant debate, economics versus peoples livelihoods are always at the fore with discussions taking place in village halls, council chambers and pubs all referring to this special piece of the Suffolk coast. Either way its a constant reminder of how we have to adapt to climate change and sea level rise, after all debate is healthy but a head in the sand attitude is not!

I walked past the lifeboat sheds, these brave people still braving their lives, in all weathers, true heroes with true grit these local people and so I take my hat off to them – or as my son would say ‘total respect man’.

For 10 years I was an auxiliary coastguard at Gorleston. I was ok, I stayed on land in the lookout or the Land Rover, these guys were the ones leaving the Harbour to a ship in distress, they faced the real challenge, manning the radio wasn’t quite in the same league. Do visit them when you are next near a lifeboat shed and pop a couple of quid at least in to the donations cairn.

Turning north along the beach was a joy, behind me this day was a front,  a bank of grey cloud coming up from the south. London I had seen that morning was in rain but I was in sun. It was fabulous to see the bank of grey cloud slowly creeping toward us, nothing you could do about it, the enormous power of nature makes you feel a little helpless. No real threat but I watched the cloud coming knowing what it brings, fascinating. Aren’t you always inspired by the natural world?

I reached the famous or is the infamous beach huts. The names make me smile as I walk past even though I have seen them all before and even though they are the cheesiest bunch of predictable names you can get, I love them. I imagine the hours of debate in a home over what they are going to call it discussing over the dinner table ‘dunroamin’ to ‘Ma’s bar’ just fabulous.

The pier looming and very busy for the time of year, I had assumed schools going back it would be quieter but no, instead full of those that holiday after the schools, although some of the conversations and antics in some of the open beach huts where, I have to say, very reminiscent of school children! A real reminder how we love to be by the sea and how the natural world feeds and calms our soul.

I met Robert Gough and Terry Hunt with our illustrious and champion photographer (and BBC Radio Presenter) Steph Mackentyre on the pier. I love the quirky atmosphere here, so totally British. I also love the coffee and the customer care on the Pier, an all-round enjoyable experience. I always think that so many memories have been formed here. My own children used to love visiting 'Nannies Caravan' at Church Farm near Aldeburgh, so many anchored memories in generations and so important for children to have some freedom too. A chance to do some roaming, getting wet and muddy, falling off the sea wall, climbing trees and even playing crazy golf, it all feeds later life and we need to re anchor children into the natural world for them to take on the reins of managing it for the future.

On the pier we talked business, tourism, walking, health and nature and it struck me how blessed we are in Norfolk and Suffolk to have such a natural world underpinning the economy and health of people. Central Birmingham I am sure is very nice and the people born and living there are I’m sure very proud of the place but aren’t we lucky here in Norfolk and Suffolk?

We were photographed with the lighthouse in the background. A lighthouse not only an icon for the town but the key lighthouse now as Orfordness has been decommissioned with Lowestoft being the northerly light now. These lights, all automatic now, like automated railway signals the old ways moving forward, soon no signal men pulling levers or lighthouse men cleaning the lamps, even some of the lights have gone LED rather than traditional bulbs saving property and energy. That’s life progress, it is important to move us forward and of course this region plays such an important part in the research and production of this new technology.

After the photographs, I walked through the centre of town, back past the water tower to the harbour, over the bridge and back to Walberswick church. A shorter walk but a good one nonetheless, as I returned  feeling all the better for it.

I have all but completed my walk round Suffolk, just a couple of bits to fill in one round Newmarket and shingle street to Felixstowe but I have done those before so I am relaxed about fitting them in this year having achieved my personal One Million Steps Challenge by August 13th. A lot of my challenge steps were done by walking to the station, walking to meetings, not using the car and going to the shops with a rucksack rather than the car so it is easy to increase your walking and your step count as part of your day and you don’t always need to do the 15 mile hikes I have been doing. I have now set my goal to achieve Two Million Steps by Christmas, with that in mind I am this autumn  planning to walk the Pedders way from Thetford to Kings Lynn and will write those up on for this blog, so do pop back and visit my blog if you can from time to time but for now may I say good walking, take care and get outside and walk you will feel so much better for it you will see some amazing stuff and it will do your health good too which can’t be bad. This final walk will also be summarised and featured in next Monday's East Anglian Daily Times and my thanks go to them for featuring some of my walks around Suffolk helping me to raise the profile of walking for well-being in Suffolk and Norfolk.

Regards Richard