Sorting Out

Yesterday, probably because I was tired when I wrote, I got tangled up completely as to where we’d been. Most of the interesting stuff was in Cley, such as the marshes and the lock, and the windmill. The tide was out in Morsten, and the boats there were all becalmed as well as at Blakeney.
And then I forgot that in the morning that we’d spent quite a while on Beeston Common, which is across the road from one of the houses Celia lived in as a child. Beeston Common is now more ‘grown-up’ than it was fifty years ago: the trees are much taller, making some parts of it more like a wood than a common. And the grasses and stinging nettles and various other plants are profuse on the ground. But there are still tracks, and a local group has signposted some of them as a way of not getting lost in the area.
Celia found the pill box that had been there when she was a child. It was built as a kind of lookout for when the Germans were coming. Health and Safety have had a go at it, and repaired it, and filled in the holes, so you can no longer get inside and play. Spoil sports. A woman passing us at that point said it was because there had been snakes and such inside it. Snakes - you tend to forget that England still has snakes, though I can’t say I’ve seen one, this time or the last time. But another woman we met in Sheringham Wood the other day said her dog had been bitten by a young adder a couple of years ago. Dogs can suffer badly from adder bites and can sometimes die, but for humans it’s more of a nasty irritation. The dog in question, one of two the woman had with her, seemed to have recovered. Along with its companion it was hiving into the pond the woman was sitting beside, and getting itself thoroughly soaked and then coming out and sharing the water with you.
I keep meaning to mention as well that we’ve frequently passed a village called Roman Camp - in fact, it was the first place we bought petrol in England. It’s rather mind-boggling to think that the Romans made such an impression on this particular area that people still call it by such a name. And I also keep forgetting to name drop and say that Bill Bryson, the travel writer and humorist, lives not far from where we’re staying now, in one of the many tiny villages around here.
After our Beeston Common excursion, we went down to the beach where the CSSM (Children’s Special Service Mission - and not Come Single Soon Married, as Celia insists it ought to be) were holding one of their beach missions. These are annual events and go on for two weeks (used to be three). There were puppets and a girl talking about Abraham, and quite a lot of kids (considering it wasn’t warm at that stage) and adults, and they were mostly pretty involved, even the teenagers sitting up in the shelter above the mission.