A friend messaged me last week asking if I wanted to join them for a foray up to the North Norfolk coast, for an overnight campout on the beach. Initially my head was full of excuses as to why I couldn’t possibly join them; too much work, catching up on activism stuff, garden needs attention, cat would be very disappointed with my service levels, and a host of other nonsense. I thought about it for 10 minutes and realised this is exactly the sort of thing I should be doing, getting away for a short break to de-frag, reset, and enjoy myself. I’ve realised that if I don’t do different things during the course of the year time passes even more quickly, and everything becomes a blur until it’s Christmas again, then New Year, and time to start again.

I broke the news to Gideon gently in the garden whilst he was hunting butterflies. He’s not very successful at hunting butterflies cos of the whole one eye thing, but he loves pouncing round the grass and hiding, ready to spring an ambush.

After finishing work on Friday I threw some kit in a bag and headed up to the North Norfolk coast, initially to Cley next the Sea to meet up for a pint, then on to Well-next-the-Sea. I don’t know why some villages in Norfolk use the ‘next the sea’ description, seems quite obvious to me, or why ‘Cley next the Sea’ isn’t hyphenated like ‘Wells-next-the-Sea’, must be one of those crazy Norfolk things. There are lots of interesting spellings of town and village names in Norfolk too, many of which aren’t pronounced as they’re spelt. I still don’t know how to say Stiffkey properly, I think it might be ‘Stukey’, and Happisburgh and Wymondham are a constant struggle for visitors; ‘Hazeborough’ and ‘Windham’ respectively.

We arrived in Wells and had dinner in a pub, which as one would expect was pretty expensive, the sea-side town being a popular holiday resort. It was worth it though, and I really did feel like I was on a proper holiday.

It was great sitting on the quay watching the sunset. The fish and chip shops along the seafront must make a fortune at this time of year; long queues of tourists from all over the country and abroad, judging from the accents and languages.

I think Wells has a pirate festival at some point in the year, but sadly no pirates were in evidence during our stay. We spotted a potential pirate ship, but there was no rum or pillaging going on. Our attempts to find a discotheque were also a failure; not sure Wells has that sort of thing, or that it would have been a good idea. After a few pints of ale we walked up to the beach, then along the dunes and cut into the forest to find a place to sleep for the night; no tents, just a roll mat, bivvy bag and sleeping bag. The Perseid meteor shower was happening and we managed to glimpse a few through the tree canopy before falling asleep. I slept pretty well, but might have snored a bit; I’m told I did, scandalous lies.

Waking up in the morning when wild camping is always a delight, especially when you’ve pitched up in the dark and don’t know what everything is going to look like. The forest and dunes did not disappoint.

An initial explore down to the beach revealed other people waking up in the dunes. I suspect many a had come to watch the Perseids. I wonder if they all bedded down completely unaware there were other like-minded people not very far away at all.

I did think about going for a morning swim, however apparently there has been a lot of sewage released into the sea at Wells recently, after the rain storms. I really wish water companies would get their act together and fix things, rather than paying massive profits to shareholders and big bonuses to executives; criminals. Come on Anglia Water, sort it out. We should nationalise all critical service companies to stop this sort of thing from happening. Anyway, breathe, I was on holiday and I’m trying not to rant about things.

After exploring the woods down to Holkam, and trying unsuccessfully to get the Jurassic Park theme tune out of my head, we headed back to Wells for a cup of tea, stopping for a swift peanut butter sandwich and fruit breakfast on the way. I had a second breakfast of croissant in a lovely bakery cafe on the sea front.

There concluded a thoroughly enjoyable micro-adventure to Wells, with no trace left of our sleep-over other than a bit more money in the coffers of local merchants.

My weekend of fun was not however, over. On getting back to Norwich, and after a siesta, I loaded up my touring bike (Smaug) and headed down to Whitlingham Broad to meet friends. This involved some further negotiation with Gideon who was a bit peeved but is really bad at staying aloof and annoyed for any length of time; bribery with cat treats also helps.

It’s been quite a while since I put all my panniers onto my bike and pedalled somewhere to camp. It really made me think about going on another cycle tour, even if it’s only a short one. Cycle touring is such a low impact way to travel, and a great way of meeting people and seeing the world. I loved my tour round the coast of Britain in 2013, and round Europe in 2015. It’s been too long since I’ve done something similar; doing the coast of Britain again is very tempting, I wonder if Gideon would be okay in a basket.

Whitlingham Campsite is excellent. I’d not been there before despite cycling past it for years on my way to and from work. It’s relatively small, family run, allows fire pits, has a small shop and very decent wash-block. I’d definitely recommend it, especially with the Broad on your doorstep for canoeing, kayaking, SUP’ing etc. There’s also a decent pub within walking or kayaking distance.

In this instance I stayed at the campsite and relaxed, chatting with friends. The sunset was very dramatic; it looked like Norwich was on fire (it wasn’t thankfully), and provided a good backdrop for a pretty murderous game of Werewolf; the werewolf’s won, however I was slain. I was a werewolf so it was probably fair, I’d eaten quite a few villagers by that point.

After a late night catching up with old and dear friends, then a good sleep in tent this time, I pedalled home in the morning. I’m definitely going to have to do more micro-adventures; I was reminded today, by some sad news, how important it is to make the most of the time one has. I’ll just make sure I find the time between everything else; it’ll help stop me going flabby – see this Alastair Humphries, which really resonated with me –> https://alastairhumphreys.com/flabbiness-2/

Final thoughts for the day. I don’t eat beans on toast enough. It’s such a magnificent meal, and healthy (please don’t tell me it isn’t). I’m going to be really upset when there aren’t things like baked beans, and Colman’s mustard, due to the climate crisis and everything going wrong.

Thoughts are with the people of Maui, who have either been killed, displaced, or otherwise horribly impacted by the wildfires, which are being made so much more frequent and worse by the climate crisis, which is caused by us. We need to stop new oil and gas, and stop our criminal politicians like Sunak, Shapps and Braverman who think opening new oil and gas fields is a good idea.