Wednesday 27 January 2010

East is East and West is West

And I know which one I like the best.

After East Runton I drove east around the Norfolk Coast, which was enlightening. If North Norfolk is Chelsea on Sea, this is Dagenham on Sea. Lots of run-down, beaten-up prefab huts masquerading as seaside villas.

Lots of potential surfing beaches, but not in the conditions I saw them. But I did go via California: I was expecting sunshine, palm trees and crooning beach boys. Instead I found this:

Tempting though it might be to say I've surfed in California, it wasn't quite tempting enough, so I headed on to Lowestoft, a fairly charmless, semi-industrial port with a pier and a nice beach. Its main attraction was that it's the most easterly point in Britain, and therefore somewhere I wanted to surf.

This part of East Anglia bills itself as The Sunrise Coast. When I woke up on Friday, it would have had trouble calling itself The Horizon Coast. I suspect The Drizzle Coast isn't going to bring in the punters.
The forecast was for strong on-shore wind and waist-high slop. And sure enough, that's what I got. Plus rain.
You know it's not ideal when the kite-surfers are out.

Still, I did what I had to do. What can I tell you? It was rubbish. But fun rubbish, for some reason. Perhaps because conditions were so appalling. After 40 minutes catching whitewash and having cold water (5ยบ, apparently) flushed down my back, I got out and headed for civilisation for a few days.

But not before one of my tyres decided it had had enough. Fortunately it didn't take me with it, and instead it let me down gently.

5 comments:

Kukurusta said...

what a hell is that on the 6th photo? some Nessie's cousin?

Anonymous said...

you were right, not a bad tyre shot! and the snow photos are eloquent too. impressive all round, stay warm!
nu

80waves said...

Kukurusta: it's the famous surf snake of Lowestoft. Many people don't believe it exists, but there you have the evidence.

Thanks, Nu!

Kukurusta said...

wow, the surf snake of Lowesotft, awesome!

80waves said...

You should come over and check it out! You'd love it!