Norfolk Pilgrim

I have a favourite walk part of the South West Coastal Path, on the north Cornish coast  from.  Trevaunce Cove, St. Agnes to Perranporth  . Much has changed since I first walked the path over 60 years ago. I have changed, but the ever changing sea and the rocky coast seem untouched by time. Toiling up steep hills and making my way down over rocky paths, I make slow progress through a heritage landscape that still bears the scars of a tin mining past. As I stop to  look back - at the cove and my life - different vistas open and I see things in a different lights and from different perspectives. Time has not left the landscape, nor me, unchanged. Back in the day,  the Trevellas Valley was a noisy, busy place. Steam from coal fired boilers drove massive, thumping, pumps in engine houses. Water driven stamp mills crushed the ore.  Horses and traction engines and all manner of mining folk competed with each other on the narrow...

At a mid-point of a walk from St. Andrew, Wickhampton towards the Berney Arms and windmill, I stopped to take stock. It is amazing what a little perspective can do! I am so frustrated at the failure of people to see and celebrate the value of our Broads National Park heritage landscape, I could scream! But out here it would be lost on the wind and the limitless sky. Instead I turn my binoculars onto a group of curlew poking in the marshy earth with beautifully curved bills and wonder. "Consider the birds........ Across the marsh, beyond the station, was my terminus. The Berney Arms mill, sadly the pub remains closed. The lyrics of Slim Dusty Pub with no Beer come to mind - nothing so lonesome morbid or drear. More seriously, I wondered what I could possibly do to raise the profile of the church in the landscape with those who hold stewardship for the National Park. There maybe opportunities to celebrate the church in the landscape as part of the up-coming Water,...