johncrosthwaitgotopieces: Between Lockdown and Lockdown

Between Lockdown and a Lockdown The man in the Barbour jacket and sturdy boots muttered to his companion: “There are a suspicious number of Tier 3 accents today..”. (Tier 3 was, until recently, the highest set of Covid restrictions in England, drastically limiting social interractions.) We were seated, not altogether comfortably, at adjacent tables outside the Beach Café at Wells. It was a dreary Saturday, the second after the end of the second lockdown in England, which had been preceded by… one forgets how many varieties of restrictions, like the famous old advertising slogan for Heinz.

The latest 4-week lockdown ended as the clock rolled past midnight of the 2/3 December. I don’t claim that we were on the road at 00.01, but a few hours later indeed. We had booked a rental in Norfolk from the last week of November until mid-ish December. Lockdown #2 meant closure of holiday accommodation, and a prohibition of travel, except for “essential purposes” (seaside visits not counting). Lockdown shut its jaws over the first days of our booking.

Come December, the jaws opened, and off we went, through subdued but very wet Norfolk roads. These mostly run through hedged banks. Drainage has not been invented hereabouts. Any heavy rainfall results in huge puddles, or perhaps more accurately local floods. The few “A” roads are often pretty narrow, but are the only thoroughfares for large lorries. They come at you at close quarters. Woe betide if you pass in one of the floods. Your vehicle is immersed in a bow, or wheel, wave of vision-obliterating water. Mind, resist the impulse to steer close to the edge of the road on your side. The carriageway has frequently crumbled into jagged potholes, more than enough to wreck a tyre or suspension.

But back to Wells. We were last here in August, during the summer’s period of sun and optimism, though not without masks and social distancing. There was fun on the beach; adventure in Holkham Park; and reasonable normality in Holkham’s cafes and Wells’s restaurants. There was a funfair. The place was busy, except at night…

This early December, there was no great surge of visitors, excepting weekends, when carparks filled up and fish and chips bought and consumed sitting in cars or on walls. Where are these day visitors from? (The rented cottages are mostly empty; the two hotels are reasonably busy, but don’t account for many people.) Have they, perhaps, snuck round the Wash from the Tier 3 Midlands?.. As the Barbour Man mentioned earlier doubtless suspected…

There’s a somewhat sad and defensive in the air now. Holkham won’t seat people in its café and demands contact details at its entrance for takeaways. Its Christmas Fayre has long socially distanced queues, causing many families to give up. Santa never sailed his boat, crewed by elves, into Wells harbour. But someone still built a creative quay-side Christmas tree, out of lobster pots.

But some things stay the same. The beaches, the forested dunes, the deer, the tides, the penetrating rain, the mist. The comings and goings of fishing boats, and honking geese.