Suffolk: Southwold to Aldeburgh 21/6/2009**

 

Harvest mouse   Walberswick Flats   Assiminea grayana

We set out directly from the hotel, walked down to the front and then south through the dunes, where we watched a young harvest mouse, with long tail, hopping and scampering, ignoring us while it fed busily among the plants.  We went as far as the mouth of the River Blyth, where dittander grew, though still only in bud.  Just a little way up was the ferry point and a man in a rowing boat came straight over to take us across to Walberswick, where again we walked to the front to more sand-covered shingle (The Flats).  Keeping to this terrain on the seaward side of a long series of marshes and lagoons (Corporation and Redland Marshes, with the local saltmarsh snail Assiminea grayana or dun sentinel), we passed mostly on shingle through all the typical flora of this habitat – sea kale, sea campion, yellow-horned poppy and sea pea, but only a little sea holly.  Birds on the lagoons included avocet, oystercatcher and little egret, and the finer shingle above them was sometimes fenced off as little tern nesting areas, although they now seemed to have left.  This continued to Dunwich, where we were glad to escape the loose shingle for more established grass and then roads up into the little village, the extreme edge of what was a large medieval town now submerged beneath the sea.  Dunwich Cliffs in front of us was private land with houses and caravan parks, so we had to wend through damp secondary woodland of little interest, other than climbing corydalis, and past the ruins of Greyfriars Friary, finally reaching a minor road that we followed south into Dunwich Heath with its heather, gorse, bracken and bell heather. The path stuck quite close to the cliff edge, eventually reaching a café that was convenient for lunch of warm sausage roll, scones, cake and coffee sitting outside, but we were just an hour too early for a Father’s Day morris dancing display.  Going back to the shore we followed a track between the shingle banks and the famous bird lakes of Minsmere until we reached the first hide and sat down for a while to watch the nesting colonies of black-headed gulls and sandwich terns, with a great deal of activity besides from lapwings, shelduck, black-tailed godwit, Canada geese, ringed plover, dunlin and a single spotted redshank, which stood out with its dark plumage.  There was also a red-fronted goose.  Too soon we had to drag ourselves away and continue along the shingle banks to Sizewell nuclear power station, where there were kittiwakes nesting on the rigs out at sea and more excellent shingle vegetation, clumps of well-separated plants as in a desert.  Tiring of shingle again we were able to find a line of sand near the sea that was now uncovered by the tide and made walking more comfortable.  We rounded Thorpe Ness and were soon passing underneath the village of Thorpeness itself, with coloured houses like the beach-huts at Southwold.  We continued below huge shelved banks of shingle, sometimes half a dozen terraces rising up the shore, as far as Aldeburgh, passing a modern metal sculpture erected on the shingle with a scallop shell motif commemorating Benjamin Britten.  Coming along the seafront we passed a busy boating pool and then the C16th Town Hall.  We walked into the main High Street where a Tourist Information Bureau was able to supply taxi numbers.  Our mobile signal was too weak, even trying higher up the town, and so we had to ask the Bureau to phone for a local taxi, which cost £30 to Southwold.  While we waited for the taxi we just had enough time to buy ice-cream cones to eat as the cool overcast day changed to a hot sunny one.  This evening we ate at Sutherland House, an excellent restaurant which, for a change in this town, was not part of the Adnams’ dynasty and even sold local beers other than theirs.

 

Walberswick Ferry     Sea pea

Sizewell Beach - sea campion   Scallop sculpture Aldeburgh "I hear those voices that will not be drowned" (Benjamin Britten Peter Grimes)

Beach-huts at Southwold Denes       Thorpeness