Holkam Beach
Doing landscape photography in Norfolk is a subtler business than in, for instance, Yorkshire or the North Downs (all books to be published by Oxbow Books) as most of the county is rather flat and agricultural. The south-wast of the county is mostly ‘marshland’, which is a continuation of the Cambridgeshire fens and well drained for agriculture, or flat forest and heath around Thetford. The south-east is very flat ‘Broads’ country, with a lot of lakes and waterways, many of which have been dug out to gain the peat for fuel, or again is agricultural. The highest the land rises to in these parts is 50 metres and there is little forest. The north is more hilly rising to Beacon Hill, near Sheringham, at 103 metres: the only place that a small bit of bold 100m contour appears on the entire Ordnance Survey map of the county. As the land rises gently towards the north, it is more wooded and also contains quite a number of stately homes, often with large parks. A few of these still include villages entirely owned by the Lord of the Manor, such as Heydon.
So there are two main perspectives on the Norfolk landscape, the first being huge skies and lines along the land disappearing into infinity, and the second being the pretty corners of the county, including the varied building styles of houses, water and wind mills, and churches! Norfolk has a lot of churches and you don’t often encounter a panorama without at least one church tower providing focus and punctuation to the scene. In order to get an interesting image of the big landscapes, the light has to be right, and then it can be really spectacular, particularly along the North Norfolk coast. The clouds are also very important: great billows of cloud, towering up like cotton wool mountains, interspersed with blue, can make a wonderful image that is much more interesting than the land below.
I have done two trips to Norfolk recently, one in September to the deep south of the county and another in October to the north. The former was difficult as the weather was mixed and as I say, the landscape is quite challenging for photographers. I’m still trying to capture a really good image of the fens that contains the essence of the flat landscape, and differentiates it from the marshes on the River Yare (visited in June). I visited Welney Wetlands Centre again and did take a nice shot of one of the drainage channels under a blue sky, but the birds at the wetland centre were not cooperating, and the shots I took of the farmland were ordinary. I then spent some time in the heaths and woods of the Brecks and Thetford Forest which was more productive. This is a developing landscape as heaths are being restored, and the woods are all quite young. Rows of bent and twisted pines are a typical feature here as farmers used pines for hedging, so they were cut back repeatedly, but then left to grow, resulting in their odd shapes.
Another nice aspect was the Lynford Arboretun that I stumbled across, near Mundford. That village was a disappointment, as I went for a walk to discover the River Wissey, imagining a pleasant stream rambling through the gentle fields and wildflowers. Instead, the footpath was completely overgrown with nettles and the way to the stream was congested with scrub and neglected. It is very sad when villages ignore their rights of way, particularly when there is potential in the countryside the pass through.
Later that day, I had some difficulty getting good shots of the River Waveney as well, because of over-intensive agriculture causing the water to full of duckweed and looking completely green (often caused by run-off of fertilisers and cow dung).
River Waveney at dusk, near Diss
By then it was a nice evening, so I made an effort but without capturing anything really lovely. During my October visit, I followed the River Wensum in the middle of the county, which I found to be much more the way that you would imagine a rural Norfolk river to look, but I’m sure I didn’t get the best of the Waveney during my short visit. That being said, Diss and Bungay were nice towns with pretty centres, and the Scole Inn where I stayed for the night was like walking into a bit of history: you felt that it really had played host to travelers for 500 years!
My October two-day trip started at Dereham and I wandered up the pretty River Wensum, then north to the extraordinary villages of Salle and Heydon. Salle is tiny, with a huge and rather lovely church which has the 2nd highest tower in Norfolk (so I was told). It also has a spectacular carved wooden font cover which tapers a long way up to a point. It seemed well kept, but there are hardly any houses. Heydon village is owned by the estate of the Manor, with the large house set in a landscaped park. There is an even bigger house in the same style with a park just up the road at Barningham. I had a pint in the pub and a chat to one of the estate’s farmers who was putting wood on the bonfire heap for November 5th: he told me that the family owning the estate had lost both the Lord and his eldest son within a short period recently.
Heydon Hall, Norfolk
Continuing to the coast, I explored Sheringham Park, climbing the ‘gazebo’, which is a wooden tower on a hill that just lifts you above the trees to see the view over the woods and along the coast. Although the light wasn’t very good for photography, I was lucky to see the steam train puffing out from Sheringham with its little line of old style coaches. I was joined by a lady, slightly out of breath from a rapid climb, who was on holiday with her husband and baby, and came from Princes Risborough, which is only a few miles from where I live.
The weather was closing in, but I got one slightly dramatic shot of the waves on Cley Beach before booking into a hotel in Blakeney. No sunset this evening, sadly, and the next morning dawned grey and damp, so it began to feel like I’d come a long way for my few shots from yesterday! I thought I might get some moody beach and cliff shots, so went to East Runton and walked along the beach. The cliffs here are a soft ochre and beige sandstone that is crumbling and eroding rapidly in the big storms, so huge basalt boulders have been deposited at vulnerable points to disrupt the force of the waves. Without this, the caravan park on the cliff top might not last long. Scattered along the beach are huge flints along with some chalk, or clunch, that must have washed in from the sea bed nearby. There are vast numbers of flint pebbles along this coast, which are the main material used for facing buildings in these parts. It wasn’t inspiring, but I took some photo’s then decided to go for a walk in a wood, where the grey skies mattered less.
I found ‘The Lion’s Mouth’ on the map, which was the west end of Felbrigg Great Wood, and was intrigued by the name and the fact that this is ancient woodland. I still don’t know why it has its name, but ti was a lovely mixed wood of mature pines growing naturally and sufficiently far apart to let the light in, and chestnut and oak. I photographed some fungi, including the hilarious Stinkhorn fungus. This emits a horrible smell that attracts flies, and one was covered in them, eating the sticky goo provided by the fungus and about to spread its spores to wherever they flew. I also encountered a flock of gold crests, which are tiny birds with a very high-pitched chirp, up in a birch tree, but didn’t get a good photo as I had the wrong lens in and they were quite far away. As I wandered, sunlight started to dapple the forest floor and the sun actually came out!
The day suddenly improved: I drove to Holkam, and as I walked onto the beach, it was a gorgeous day! The beach was brightly lit against a dark sky, and the sun cast long shadows from shells and pebbles across the sand. I walked and photographed for an hour or so, then drove the short distance to Holkam Park where I walked a few miles in the warm sunshine, photographing the fallow stags in rut, the lovely lake and the amazing designer view of the huge mansion from the point where the Earl of Leicester had watched its construction 200 years ago.
From Holkam, I headed home, taking a few more shots on the way as I encountered a church, or a pretty pond, or a wide panorama with some interest, feeling that I’d achieved a lot and had a good harvest of images.
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