Yorkshire Walks

The car park by Agar Creek at Blakeney

Wild fowl seen from the Peddars Way at Blakeney

We watched the tide coming in one evening and it was alarming just how fast the water in the channels rose. The area where our car was parked today was soon under water! It would be all too easy to be cut off if you ventured onto the saltmarshes at the wrong state of the tide. From the car park we set off Northwards following the Peddars Way along the top of a floodbank.

My wife and I are spending this week in a holiday cottage on the North Norfolk Coast. We drove down here this morning and this afternoon we have come to Blakeney . We parked in a car park with an ominous warning about unpredictable tidal flooding at map ref. TG028441. The village is on the coast, but it's not like any sea front that I've seen before. There are many boats but they are moored in a muddy channel, part of a network of channels through the saltmarshes. The saltmarshes are between 1 and 2km wide running for many kilometers along the shore. There are large sand dunes on the seaward side of the marshes and then beaches next to the open sea.

Villages along the coast all have signs in this style

The Peddars Way along the floodbank through the saltmarshes near Blakeney

A hull left to rot into the marshes

Following the Peddars Way towards Crey

I think the gas is piped to a huge underground storage facility in Lincolnshire. We continued to follow the Peddars way in a clockwise loop for over 3km until we reached Crey Windmill (map ref. TG045440) on the edge of the saltmarshes at Crey-next-the-Sea.

There were birds feeding in the saltmarshes and we noticed particularly white egrets and redshanks, but they were too wary to get a decent photograph with my "point and click" camera. Out to sea we could see the superstructure of a gas production rigg.

A white egret feeding in the marshes

Cattle grazing on the edge of the marshes at Crey

Crey windmill with bride & groom on the walkway

Footpath by the A149 to Blakeney

At the road we turned right to walk along the road. The road is quite busy but fortunately there is a footpath. For part of the way the footpath is separated from the road by a few trees and bushes. The road climbed up a small rise and took us past the church at Blakeney.

The windmill must provide a wedding venue because there were wedding guests milling around the base of the mill in the sunshine. The bride and groom were sipping champagne on the walkway around the mill about a third of the way up the structure. From there we continued on the Peddars Way to the main coast road (A149) at map ref. TG043438.

Footpath by the A149 to Blakeney

The letter box provides a splash of colour

The church at Blakeney

Even today on at a weekend in school term time the area is popular with many other people doing the same walk. It must be very crowded in the summer holidays. It's a fascinating landscape and it's easy to see why it's so popular.

About 150m beyond the church we turned right off the main road to walk through the village back to the waterfront at Blakeney on Agar Creek where we had started. The whole walk had been 6km and it had taken us about two and a half hours to walk.

The waterfront at Blakeney