Norfolk Pilgrim

Elizabth Kubler Ross's reearch into death and dying  (e.g. lifeafterdeath ) records how going down a tunnel to a place of light is a common place experience I have lost the memory but my children retell the story I told to them as I recovered consciousness: "I was going down (the River Bure ?  Acle Straiht? ) to Great Yarmouth, got to the Berney Arms and decided to turn back! I learned that when my heart stopped Paul,Gary and the lady from St. John's Ambulence worked on me untill the ambulence men restarted my heart! Is Great Yarmouth a place of light? Is it heaven or hell? I'm sorry not to remember anything but I have a sense that in many ways it would have been OK to go all the way to  Yarmouth ( and to the God who is like an endless sea?) Excited to find myself alive at 3a.m. this morning I decided to say Morning Prayer . How the words burned with meaning as I recited Psalm 71! Forsake me not, O God, when I am old and grey-headed,  • till I...

An advert for the  annual Norfolk Churches Trust bike ride reminded me what a joy church crawling by bike can be.  Swapping feet for wheels I set out under a summer sky. East of  Beeston, St. Laurence  I found myself meandering down  quiet lanes towards St. Michael and All  Angels,Barton Turf . When I got there I found an open door, a warm welcome to visitors ( make yourself a cup of coffee ) and a vibrant stillness. Its 15 th century rood screen has St. Michael and the nine orders of angels. Wandering in the churchyard before taking my leave I saw that the local church has a care for other feathered friends too! There’s an owl box high in an old oak tree! My next church destination would be   St. Michael, Irstead.  But on the way , I popped into the White Horse at Neatistead for refreshments and explored the edge of Barton Broad. At Heron’s Carr  there’s boardwalk that gives wheelchair access through the woody marsh and o...

 Evensong at St. Benet's The whole Company of Heaven Sang out Peace There was fire and wind The Spirit brooded over the waters

The Broads are my local wilderness.  I love the landscape, the wildlife and the slow waters. Under the wide skies I can be at one with nature; re-imagine Jesus’ lakeside ministry; slow down and escape from our 24/7 lifestyle; all that’s needed to catch up with a 3 mile an hour God. Long ago, on an island where three rivers meet, hermits established a community. Following the example of Egyptian monks, the tidal marsh and reed beds was their green desert !  In time the community became a Benedictine  monastery and, until Henry VIII’s reforms, St. Benet’s Abbey was a powerful centre for the Christian faith.  Still the abbey has a powerful attraction. Wandering on foot or by boat, I find my eyes searching for the familiar outlines of its ruined gate-house and scanning higher ground to catch sight of church towers on the horizon.  Higher than most is the one they call The Cathedral of the Broads - St. Helen’s, Ranworth Visitors are invited to ...

Norfolk Hawker copyright Ben Revell used with his permission One day last summer...... High summer with big blue skies, a warm sun and butterflies and dragon flies on the wing. On such a day I went to Strumpshaw Fen. My intention was  to “consider the flowers of the field”.  You can go there at anytime of year “to consider the birds” . June is the month for flowers! Strumpshaw Fen’s wildflower meadow is a remnant of, once common,  flower rich pasture. Plantlife UK estimate that 97% of the habitat was lost between 1930 and 1980! The names of the flowers are poetry in themselves : - Ragged Robin,  Yellow Rattle, Marsh Orchid, Marsh Cinquefoil, Yellow Flag.  They were a joy to behold! Soon  my attention was taken by the Swallow Tailed Butterflies – what beauty !  Next it was the turn of dragonflies……. A chance meeting with a wildlife photographer led to a master class in dragonfly identification. It was difficult not to share his enthusiasm. At t...

2nd October was the annual Fursey Pilgrimage at Burgh Castle Lovely day! Well done everyone!   http://churchestogetheronthebroads.org.uk/2010/10/04/annual-st-fursey-pilgrimage/ Fursey celebration at St Matthews, Norwich on 15th Jan More info ......

Broads Brand? Hmmnnnn See Churches Together on the Broads

I   walked down the lane at the height of spring enjoying the sun . The air was as heady as chilled champagne and  I was following my nose. There was a new whiff of pig on the air.  I set off to investigate passing  down Horstead’s Primrose Lane but for all my searching I couldn’t find even one!  Stitchwort and early Bluebells? Yes.  Primroses? No.  Yet there must have been lots of them once upon a time. Did thieves plunder them ?   There are lots of wild Primroses in local gardens, but my guess is that  a change of maintenance of the verges will have played  largest part.  In days gone by they made as much hay as they could.  Now the verges are cut and left.  Un-raked grass soon becomes rank and humpy and  can strangle plants. Primroses are especially vulnerable. Saddened by the loss of Primroses I found two places where rubbish had been dumped by the roadside.  Doesn’t fly tipping  make you cr...

What brilliant hosts the people of Winningen are! Not only did they take Kemp's Men into their homes and hearts but into their cellars as well! We danced, drank and chatted the festival through - renewing old friendships and making new ones too! Among them Romanetz a Ukrainian Dance group from Canada, a group from Treviso in Italy and others from Sweden, Belgium, Luxembourg, Benin, Columbia, Switzerland and dozens from around Germany. What was it about? I think the words of the Evangelische Kirche's minister at an ecumenical service on Sunday had it about right - God plays the music of life and we all respond to it one way or another - sometimes just tapping a foot, at at othertimes "putting your whole self in!" After the service there was impromptu dancing on the green outside - the Treviso musicians appeared to be playing "She'll be coming round the mountain when she comes." What asked my friend is the significance of that? Here is my considered re...

Well, no! I snapped this Dalmatian Pelican in the Danube Delta last week - where I was with with Honey Guide (www.honeyguide.co.uk) , being guided by Daniel Petrescu of www.ibis-tours.ro ( see also Danny's website www.danielpetrescu.ro ) I had a brilliant time - thanks Danny - and found an almost uncanny similarity with my own Broadland haunts. The birds were amazing and a little different from what I'm used to on the Broads. Not only White and Dalmatian Pelicans, but Squacco Herons, Night Herons, Little Bitterns, Red and Black Necked Grebe. I think I'll start a campaign to twin the Broads with the Danube Delta - please join the campaign if you can! In the meantime you might want to add your protests to those of other bird minded people against the planned errection of 21 wind turbines on the rocky saddle of the Bespeke Hills the only high land that divides the Delta from an adjacent lake. Pelicans and migrating raptors using the hills to gain altitude are likely to...

As spring unfolds and the birds begin to sing I look forward to summer Swallows swooping over field and fen. Today we can trace the swallows’ journey from winter roosts outside Durban, through Africa and Europe to East Anglia’s marsh and meadow. It’s an amazing story and many of us are glued to our televisions when Springwatch and other TV programmes unfold the wonders of our natural world. 18th century naturalists supposed that swallows hibernated through the winter’s cold beneath the mud at the bottom of ponds, breaking forth from their earthy tombs for Easter days! Not an entirely silly idea! The first Swallows are usually to be spotted around Easter time and over or near water as they hoover-up bugs and flies. Truer to our modern understanding of the Swallows migration is the ancient Egyptian myth in which the souls of the dead on the way to the stars are represented as swallows. Nearer to our own time is the Armenian folk tale in which swallows fly from the empty tomb with g...

I'm more than chuffed having got the thing up and half decent. See it at http://ctotb.wordpress.com I am particularly happy with the bit on Broads Spirituality and Fishing. It was the fishing bit that made me offer to sort the site out. Really when you think about it, Lots of Jesus' friends were fishermen then, what about now? I'm glad to say the otters are not the only catchers of fish in our dyke. My grandson and I have pulled one or two pike out and several nice perch. Which is better than my record on evangelism!

Its brilliant there's otters in the dyke outside our home. We had one visit us last year. This year we had a mother and 3 part grown kittens. I'm really sad I couldn't get pics of all four together.

There is something special about St. Saviours Church, Surlingham. The ruins sit on a raised hillock above Church Marsh, looking out across the River Yare to Postwick. The churchyard is the entirely appropriate last resting place of Ted Ellis. Ted’s weekly EDP articles and radio and television appearances did so much to educate East –Anglians about the wonders of nature on their own doorstep and encouraged people to think about conservation. Next to him, in death as she was in life, are the mortal remains of his much loved wife Phyllis. Their old home, just down-river, at Wheatfen now serves as a nature reserve. Church Marsh has been managed as a reserve since 1984. Together with land at Stumpshaw and Rockland, Church Marsh forms part of the Mid Yare Reserves National Nature Reserves managed by the RSPB. From the churchyard I watched a Marsh Harrier, hanging low on the wind, quartering the marsh as it searched for its supper. Now, because of Ted’s pioneering work, this bit of God’s c...

There was standing room only at Burgh Castle church on Saturday 4th October when the annual pilgrimage of the Fursey Pilgrims took place. Joining the pilgrims this year was Fr Nicolas Jouy, the Parish Priest of Peronne in the Somme area of France. St. Fursey died before returning to England from France in the year 650 AD. His shrine was established at Peronne. The service only took places after the pilgrims had refreshed themselves at the Church Farm pub. Some had earned a good lunch by walking the Breydon Water path from Great Yarmouth train station. Others had come long distances to honour St.Fursey so they could not be denied a delicious carvery meal looking out across the water to the Berney Arms windpump and the Fleggs. Pere Nicholas preached the sermon developing the idea of ecumenism as putting the pieces of a jig-saw together - it may seem impossible at first, there should be no attempt to force pieces together where they do not belong, miraculously we find there is a fit betw...

On an autumn day, where cattle grazed, I crossed marshy fields to the beach. Ragged Robin, the summer’s last flowers danced in the breeze. The first skeins of wintering geese honked in the sky. Beyond the dunes 30 seals were hauled up on the sands, lolling around like so many enormous slugs. More were out at sea impersonating inquisitive black Labradors . I sat. How therapeutic it is to sit with seals! They have the art of being and not doing ! I’d parked at the National Trust’s Horsey Mere car park. There are toilets and a café open every day to the end of October and at week ends through November. I’d used the permissive footpath that leads off from the other side of the road - if you are at all in doubt ask at the café they’ll direct you! Once on the beach, turn right and you soon come to the seals . A few are there most of the year but they turn up in numbers in September and October. My way took me back past the pub – refreshments here are recommended - and...