Tag Archives: hut

Sand, surfing, rocks and caves

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Amy and Oliver head down the hill to Lee harbour

Halfway through our week at Daymer Cottage. The Murrays and Dot have just left for Barnstaple to do more food shopping, and David and Oliver are playing a card game that Amy has invented. It’s intricate, but it works. I spent an hour playing it with her yesterday. Amazing creativity.

It’s overcast again, but we’ve had some very good weather as well as some rain. We discovered that we were entitled to the use of a beach hut at Woolacombe, which is a huge sandy beach beset by much surfing. We drove there down narrow lanes late on Saturday and managed to park solely because so many people were leaving. Dot obtained the beach hut key from the shop and we found the hut – Number 43, Myrtle – a bit of a trudge down the beach.

We returned yesterday for most of the day (parking £7 per car), and the children enjoyed it very much. It was warm, and the tide was exceptionally low: quite an expedition to reach it. Loads of surfing going on, and the children were able to use the board we found at the house. There were so many people on the beach that we kept losing each other, but the children were quite capable of finding the hut on their own. During the day we bought ice cream, and then chips, from stalls on the beach.

Sunday started grey, but became warm and sunny. We spent most of it down at Lee Bay, which expands dramatically when the tide is out. Loads of rocks and rock pools, and the children especially enjoyed a river that channels down across the beach. Oliver and I (with Roger) had reconnoitred the previous day and found a path to another cove: now the tide was far enough out to reach it across the rocks.

We found a cave and Oliver did much climbing on the rocks. The more vigorous among us decided we would all climb the steps up to the cliff at the far end and walk back round by the road: quite strenuous, but different. Back at the cove Dot and I stayed for an hour or so as the tide came in, until the small space remaining was overrun by dogs.

The house is delightful, with great views of the Bristol Channel and, in clear conditions, Wales. A few boats and kayaks pass at low tide.

6 July 2007

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A fuller view of the refreshment hut mentioned last time: a truly amazing agglomeration of cast-off building materials, it also contains a library, or maybe a secondhand book shop. It was hard to tell which. It is situated just behind what used to be a shingle bank at Cley, and its continued existence is truly remarkable. Perhaps it was washed up by the sea some time in the past, or repeatedly.

The weather has continued very wet, although I managed to get into the city and back yesterday, and managed a two-mile walk the day before. I now have my watch back with its new battery and accompanying reassurance. Existing without a watch is a very odd experience: it’s easy enough to find out what the time is, but mostly you don’t bother. Days seem to last longer. I also got some euros for Ireland, in the hope that further terrorist cock-ups don’t shut down the airports. Last week failed car bombs in London and an attack on Glasgow airport that didn’t work.

Last night I had what was probably a unique experience: I went to an opera and loved every minute of it. I steer clear of operas because the language and the plot are usually so banal, and you can’t hear the words anyway, but we went to this one because a friend was singing in it. It was The Night Bell, a one-acter by Gaetano Donizetti, and it was put on by Claxton Opera. This is a group based in a small village near the River Yare, east of Norwich – really out in the wilds. We had to park in a farmyard and were driven by minibus up to a large house (The Old Meeting House, but someone actually lives there), where the inside had been re-formed to provide a small concert hall holding about 80-90 people. The orchestra were on the ground floor beneath the stage, which was therefore on the first floor – level with one set of seats. We were in the second-floor “gallery” – front row, with a great view down on to the stage.

The production was highly professional, from stage sets through costumes to acting and direction. The first half of the programme was Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale – not an opera, but an acted-out story with a narrator (the brilliant David Newham) and of course Stravinsky’s music, which was rather in the style of Kurt Weill. The acting was excellent and the story not too bad, but there were rather tedious lulls where the music took over and there was nothing for the actors to do – so we had dancers prancing around rather pointlessly.

The Donizetti was stunning, however. Our friend Ruth was Serafina, one of the leading roles: I knew she could sing, but her acting was a revelation – some beautiful comic touches. The whole thing was extremely funny, and the two leading men were both superb, as were the chorus. Maybe it was the acoustics, but you could actually hear what people were singing.

Needless to say it started raining as we left Norwich and continued all evening. There was a bit of hanging around waiting for the minibus afterwards, but we had umbrellas, and we managed to have a chat with Ruth and with a woman in the chorus who we’d known long ago, when Dot taught at Surlingham.