Lincolnshire: Sutton Bridge to King's Lynn 4/7/2008**

 

Mudflats and big sky (see the sea between?)   Alexanders   Lynn Ferry

We parked at the eastern lighthouse by the Nene, once Peter Scott’s house, where he did many of his paintings.  The small ponds in the garden of this house had a range of birds like pochard, tufted duck and red-breasted goose.  Then we walked the embankments once again to the far mouth of the Nene and along the edge of the Wash.  This time it was close to high tide, which gave us more of a glimpse of the sea than before and even the odd grey seal on the sands through binoculars.  This is a National Nature Reserve, but it is difficult to see much from the shore, only occasional views of birds like little egret or curlew across the wide saltmarsh.  It is essentially “big sky” country, with all views across the flat land dominated by the overarching blue.  Hardly any houses are in view, just a glimpse occasionally of farm buildings largely hidden by a screen of planted trees.  The many ditches are polluted by fertiliser run-off from the agricultural land and covered with algae instead of plants.  The fields are huge with few hedges, vast crops of peas, potatoes, cabbage and wheat.  We enjoyed a chance to leave the embankment for a short while when we encountered a path across the saltmarsh to a small artificial island, possibly an experiment in constructing defensive earthworks (Walpole Island).  This gave us a close view of the main saltmarsh plants, still wet from the retreating tide.  We met several local people who had come to collect samphire (glasswort), some for their own consumption (fresh or pickled), the rest for sale, as there were large swathes of bushy plants further out that they sought.  The rough vegetation of the island, a very minor hill only surrounded by sea at high tide, was remarkable for much ploughman’s spikenard and a few plants of bee orchid in seed, both possibly having come in with the stones imported to build the island.  Here we also saw the Notable B leaf-beetle Chrysolina oricalcia. By now we had passed the border between Lincolnshire and Norfolk.  The rest of the walk was further embankment, relieved only by finding the first little colony of alexanders this holiday.  The heat of the sun raised water vapour from the long grass that bordered the mown path and showed as a white cloud like smoke in the far distance, blown by the light breeze towards the sea.  Passing through we could feel the moist heat rising from the tall plants.  A patch of nettles had many peacock butterfly caterpillars, some of which were crawling across the path, perhaps ready to pupate.  Eventually we reached the far SE corner of the Wash and continued along the west bank of the Great Ouse, following a wide expanse of mown grass with hedges inland, over which we twice caught sight of a lone buzzard, in one case mobbed by black-headed gulls.  We passed evil-smelling chemical works on both sides of the river as we entered West Lynn.  On the river mudbanks, herring and greater black-backed gulls replaced the black-headed gulls that dominated the general saltmarsh.  As soon as we reached housing the passenger ferry arrived from the other side, so we walked straight on without interruption to our progress!  As by now the tide was rather low, we had to leave by planks across the water and wet mud to get to Ferry Lane into King’s Lynn.  Both workers and schoolchildren use the ferry daily, as the only road bridge is far south of the town.  We crossed the centre of King’s Lynn mostly by pedestrian streets to the bus station, where the bus we thought had left arrived late, so we were able to board immediately to get taken back to Sutton Bridge.  We could not get a taxi for the 3 miles out to the lighthouse where we were parked, so we had to walk all the way.  We drove back to King’s Lynn, entering from the south along the gentrified South Quay to the end at King’s Staithe Square, where we are staying at the Bank House hotel, an imposing old building with spacious comfortable rooms for us to relax.  We walked along South Quay in the evening sunshine to Bradley’s wine bar and restaurant for our evening meal.