FORGOTTEN HIGHWAYS

This day was the culmination of a year’s curiosity, a month’s planning, a day’s coordination and an evening of careful packing. Five of us drove along the coast road towards Wells-next-the-Sea and I was relieved to see some clear sky break through the cloud ceiling, the first sign that the weather was about to change after two days of torrential rain in north Norfolk. We arrived at East Quay, Wells in the early dawn light to see skipper Henry Chamberlain coming off his boat My Girls to greet us.

With Henry as our guide, we planned to travel between Wells and Cley, not the usual way at sea but rather by traversing a meandering series of creeks that criss-cross the salt marsh coast. At Stiffkey we would cross the sand bar that guards Blakeney Harbour (aka “the Pit”), head east through the Pit past Morston Creek and Blakeney New Cut to enter the newly opened channel up to Cley. It’s a largely inshore route but Henry said that crossing the bar with a strong northerly wind could be challenging. It’s a bit of history in the making as we will probably be only the third crew to make the passage in recent living memory. In addition, as I was about to discover, nothing could have prepared me for a journey of such contrasts.

MY GIRLS

is a newly restored clinker-built 20-foot crab boat built in 1965 in Sheringham and now licensed to carry up to seven adults. She looked pristine with her blue strakes and white painted wooden interior. Her carefully arranged stores and orderly layout bore witness to Henry’s fastidious approach – and perhaps his Royal Marines background. We settled in and Henry started the inboard Beta Marine diesel engine, the only thing to break the silence of dawn over the salt marshes. The engine quietly chugged into life and we left the mooring pontoon, passing the newly restored whelk boat , sister ship, and then a restored lifeboat that took part in the Dunkirk evacuations. We could just make out the shoreline houses in the early dawn light