Sunny Hunny

Hunstanton (pronounced "Hunstun" apparently) is that rare jewel, a west facing east coast resort. I arrived very early on a Sunday morning before most places were open, and had a good mooch round. It's a Victorian Gothic model seaside village, built in 1846 by a local landowner with the splendid moniker of Henry Styleman Le Strange.
Later sixties and seventies accretions dominate the seafront, but the centre is pure C19th English seaside. P G Wodehouse set his comic country retreats hereabouts, and characters are named after local villages.

The Golden Lion - formerly the Royal Hotel and more commonly Le Strange's Folly - looks over the sloping green and mini roundabout. The bin men are on an early round.

The Entertainment Centre marks the spot where a Victorian pier, complete with miniature railway stood. It suffered two fires in 1939 and the 1950s before the entire structure was swept away, along with a number of other English piers, in the storms of 1978. The new structure dates from early in the millennium.

The pier was the setting for the 1957 Ealing Movie "Barnacle Bill" starring Alec Guinness.

The war memorial and gardens overlook The Wash, beyond which the distant Lincolnshire coast can be seen. Seafront gardens evoke the shade of E M Forster, and unbridled passion among the geraniums.

A small children's playground. The rocking horse took me back half a century. The reproduction railings are unnecessarily robust, but the putting green cabin is delightful.

The Princess Theatre, previously the Capitol Cinema of 1932, is a splendid modernist-vernacular mix, boasting the largest Carr stone gable in the world. A poster suggests The Bachelors are playing and a Helen Millen film is in the offing.

Hunstanton town hall and tourist information centre.

The Tamworth Tea Rooms. John Betjeman would have appreciated them.

Hunstanton has the finest joke shop in the country, according to a chap who stopped me by the sea front. I wouldn't argue.

There's really no excuse for this kind of thing. A grim brick edifice totally out of keeping with the town.

Hunstanton is something of an anomaly in North Norfolk, a place mostly defined as genteel and elegant, with London second homers and quiet yachting harbours. I liked it very much in spite of its faded glamour and vulgar architecture, and would certainly return.

Walsingham Diversion

If any destinations have accrued the hope and desire of the walker, it is the sites of pilgrimage. Walsingham in Norfolk is a Marian shrine that has been embraced by Established, Catholic and Orthodox churches in the C20th.
With the dissolution of the monasteries came the destruction of the priory. The remains of the abbey here glimpsed through the bars of the gatehouse.


Ecclesiastical supplier's window with multi-scale simulacra of saints.


Priced altar furniture.


Methodist Church, mostly classical lines and a counterpoint to the exuberance elsewhere.


Lock up for spiritual failures. Alarmingly reminiscent of a clay kiln.


Abbey gatehouse, much denuded of saints. Ghostly roofline and mixed architectural main street.


On 20 August 1897 the first post-reformation pilgrimage took place to the slipper chapel (1338). The big top is for a Catholic youth festival. The chapel was where pilgrims removed their shoes for the last "holy mile" to Walsingham.


Contemporary pilgrimage transport, including archangelic spare wheel cover.


Holy water on tap


Greek Orthodox Church of St Seraphim in the former Walsingham railway station. The station doubles as a railway museum and Icon gallery, surely a unique enterprise?

 
The former track bed is home to the Wells and Walsingham Light Railway.


To Wells on 10 1/4" track. The palimpsest of religious denominations, architecture, history and commerce make Walsingham a moving and surreal experience. Pure Chaucer and definitely worth a second visit.

Slawit and Linfit

A temporary aspect, the mill gone and houses are to fill the gap. Rail, river and canal leapfrog up the valley. Slaithwaite viaduct with local stopper.


Weavers cottages and the mills that replaced them. The cottages survive, the mills are retail, leisure, artisan. Colne Valley was Luddite central, now Commuterland. Train to the fleshpots of Manchester, Leeds and beyond.


Canal between two compensating reservoirs at Sparth. The left is a Lido, both are fishing lakes. Marker stone in foreground.


Winding hole, canal, West Slaithwaite. Compost corner. The hillock more Devon than West Riding.


Coal drops, Slaithwaite. Quiet now except for birds.


A side entrance to the old station, or a goods office - I'm not sure. Nice bit of LNWR lamp work.


Viaduct east of Slaithwaite. The vertiginous lean is mine. Skip hire and whatnot beneath the vaulting arches.


The other side. Disused mill, wolf leading couple.


Heading towards Linthwaite along the canal. One doesn't like to ask.


Demolished cottage near Linthwaite coal drops. End of Colne Valley industrial excursions for the moment.

Re-alignment

Marsden. Dead platform on your left. Alight here for the past, mind the gap. The goods yard metals thwarted by birch trees, the impermanent way ends in the car park. 
Over the cut and into the tunnel. Vinyl advertisements taunt the souls of navigators, an abyss of 3 miles and 60 yards into Lancashire. Electrification is on the agenda.

The express gets a lick on. Two seas to gather and no time to wait. The shutter turns the timetable to Ogham.

The Bridge

Here is a bridge undone by the light. A moment's inattention revealed the film and the express from Manchester, the horse feed buckets and the rusty rivets succumbed to a pocket sunset. A dandelion in the ruby shadow, the pink hill and the orange trees drowned in foolishness and the long walk along the canal and up the steps all redness and gilt.