UK from Norfolk 2016: From market town to Cley Marshes

Cley (pronounced "cligh" as in high) is a village bordering a marshland on the northern coast of Norfolk. This link will take you to their village website if you want to check out more detail of the region (and there is plenty of it). A little further west is Blakeney Point where we hope to take boat ride to view seal colonies.

We had driven through Cley and surrounding villages and towns on our way back from Holt with Ruth a few days earlier. A drive along part of the north coast seeing the North Sea, the scenic railway lines and glimpses of the Norfolk Coast Path - part of the Peddars Way and the National Trail. No intentions of walking the Trail, but certainly parts of the North Coast Path and some of the other walks ... all in good time.

This visit was a bird-watching walk with Sean. We also took Daisy for a walk with us ... would probably make a good documentary: two old men and a dog. Not going to happen! Here is one (Sean) with the dog (and you can see some grazing geese in the middle background) as we began heading back from the pebbled North Sea coastline. The big building far right background is the Cley Spy where we began and were returning to the car.

Cley is renowned for its windmill - a very nice restaurant, shop and B&B these days - and the photo to the right below shows the panorama of the marshes stretching away to the North Sea - if you look closely you can see a lone building way out looking very lonely and desolate. We did not head in that direction.

The afternoon was very still, if very overcast. We were grateful it was still ... given the heavy cloud it was easy to imagine it would be a forbidding place to try to hold a set of binoculars or a camera steady when the wind was blowing! Buggar the birds then! We headed out along a series of dykes enjoying the stillness through the marshes and ponds and the odd gorse bushes and lots of Norfolk reed beds ... to the North Sea.

Some crab boats and posts on the pebbles; a couple of fishermen and their tent - as you see quite a different experience even on a still day to what you might find fishing on our beaches! Oh, and I found some of that "felt-like" seaweed I described but did not have a picture of when walking with George & Daisy at Wells-Next-the-Sea. A calm day on the North Sea.

And so I better show you some of the birds - there were some there :). Not too many yet and I am not going to try to be clever and name them. It was just good to capture some of them in a natural environment going about their daily chores - with the final photo being a stark reminder of what happens when they take that seriously :(. Nature has her ways - always!

This first one is a short video of a flock of geese on the wing & honking annoyance at having to do so ... this was not long before we reached the beach.