The North Norfolk coast has changed a lot in the 12 years since we started coming here on holiday. It’s changed even more than that since Wifey came here when she was a nipper. Gone are the days of dilapidated but cosy pubs giving gratis pate on toast, to be replaced with every other property painted National Trust green and offering proper customer service. Unfortunately this means the beautiful countryside has begun to attract the sort of people that ruin beautiful countryside. Today I actually saw a man pull the wing mirrors on his Range Rover in because he didn’t think a humped back bridge was wide enough for his car. A bridge that takes tractors and buses and has done for decades.
From a personal point of view, I think the move upmarket began with the relaunch of The Orange Tree pub some years ago. Swanky, modern signs, gravy replaced with jus, it gave the Hunter welly brigade somewhere to feel comfortable. I’ll never forget the night we had dinner in a cracking pub next to Binham Priory either. A Chelsea tractor eventually managed to park itself in the carpark and the first sighting of Hoorays happened. They “haw-hawed” over the menu, laughing hysterically at “Fish N chips with MOOSHY peas.” They didn’t stay to eat though, perhaps the pub had a little too much of the Slaughtered Lamb about it or perhaps there weren’t enough things on the menu drizzled with a jus, we certainly didn’t care.
Once it started though, there was no stopping it. You can now successfully fail to get change from a tenner for a sandwich and coffee if you know where to go. Farewell chipped enamel mugs. The same thing has happened to house prices- a three bed cottage will set you back over half a million in right village, in some places that much will only get you a small apartment. The weekend place for the city set is now in Norfolk, only 100 miles from London.
We were horaay’d on the beach at Brancaster today. On one side of our slightly knackered beach tent there was a man with a comb over and a stripy jumper tied just so over his neck in what I’m sure he thinks is a great individual affectation but in reality just makes him look like a balding tosser who can’t manage to get his arms through his jumper properly. He was telling his wife some “horrendously funny” story about Nigel failing to moor his yacht properly.
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| send your kids to play in front of my beach tent will you? One word for you: “engorged”. |
On the other side we had an extended family who were so posh, they couldn’t play in front of their beach tents, they had to send the kids over to in front of ours and they couldn’t call the kids Granny Granny, she had to be referred to as Ti-Ti. I retaliated to this invasion of our view and peace and quiet in the only way I know how- with obscene amounts of culture and obscene amounts of obsceneness. That’s right, I recreated The Cerne Abbas Giant, complete with huge boner, in the sand in front of our tent. That got rid of Oliver, Claris, Rupert and the rest of the little sods.
Unfortunately I have no photographic evidence of this because once the other kids had gone, Fifi stamped all over Brancaster Beach Giant’s genitals, much as she tries to do to mine at a moments warning.