Cromer

"Raji is to live and take care of you," Lady Minto told me.

On the fourteenth August, Raji was removed to Cromer.

It was the end of his sad pilgrimage.

As he was lifted out of bed, he remarked to his head chauffeur, "Davidson, you're taking me away to die." I hid myself in my misery, and as I looked from an upper window, I saw Raji put into the ambulance.

I had been asked to go, but I could not, as my eyes were too red and I could not hide my feelings.

I followed him to Cromer and stayed at the hotel.

I used to go to Raji's house, which was nice and clean and had a pretty little garden.

To my eyes, Raji did not look any better, but the doctors thought he was getting on nicely.

Now, the crag deposit you can see along the coast here is called the Roxham Crag, which is weird because that's inland, but it was formerly known as the Weybourne Crag.

I always thought it was the Cromer Crag.

Cromer Crab, I think.

Ah, right, yes.

And many of the best fossils have

Deep history path.

Yes.

Which runs from here, Weyburn, through Sheringham, West Runton, East Runton, Cromer, Ovestrand, Trimmingham, Munsley, Walcott, Haysborough and Cart Gap.

On the 22nd of April 1955, in the quiet hamlet of Metton, Norfolk, a place where time seems to stand still amidst rolling fields and winding lanes, April Fabb is born, the youngest of three daughters to Ernest, a stoic farm worker, and Olive, a diligent domestic cleaner.

At Number 3 Council Houses, a modest home nestled in this rural enclave near Cromer, April grows up shy but warm-hearted, her blue eyes and fair hair framing a pretty oval face.

She's an animal lover, doting on the family's terrier, Trudy, and finds joy in stamp collecting, needlework, and crafting her own clothes.

Her bedroom walls burst with posters of Amen Corner, her favorite band, their hit If Paradise Is Half as Nice a constant hum in her life.

At Cromer Modern School, she's known as a good girl from a good family, a sensible, happy teenager who babysits for locals, attends church faithfully, and cycles the country lanes to visit friends and family, embodying the innocence of rural England in the 1960s.

In early 1969, as spring blooms in Norfolk, April's sister, Pamela, moves out to start her own life with her husband and young son in a council house on Cromer Road, Routon, just two miles from Metton.

April, now 13, often pedals her blue and white bicycle along these quiet hedge-lined lanes to visit Pamela, a routine as familiar as the Norfolk breeze.

Metton, barely a village, is a cluster of homes surrounded by fields not far from Cromer, a sleepy fishing town on the North Norfolk Coast.

It was an enjoyable short, but what was particularly notable about it was the use of local creatives, pretty much exclusively those from North Norfolk.

It was also shot in Sheringham and West Runton, which is a little village between Sheringham and Cromer along the North Norfolk coast.

I really admired her determination to include the area that's been so fundamental to her life and career so far, and I'm hopeful the reaction of people will spur her on to produce more like this.

I also went to Dereham Theatre Company to watch their final performance of We Will Rock You.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had just returned to England from serving in the Boer War in South Africa.

He had contracted a severe case of enteric fever, typhoid, and he traveled to the coastal town of Cromer in Norfolk to recuperate.

He was accompanied on this holiday by his close friend, the journalist and editor, Beatrem Fletcher Robinson.

They stayed at a local hotel, played some golf, and spent some time dining at the Cromer Hall, a large estate owned by a prominent local family.

Robinson was a passionate collector of regional myths and local legends, and as they sat around the hall, Robinson regaled Conan Doyle with the pervasive, terrifying East Anglian folklore of the Spectral Black Shuck.

Conan Doyle was already deeply interested in the supernatural.

However, that ghost story might have been attached to the wrong pile of undersea rubble.

Off Cromer in Norfolk, Norfolk, Norfolk, I'm just covering my butt.

Sorry, I know I'm destroying these names, was a medieval settlement called Shipton.

I say was because part of the coastline it occupied is now underwater.

The Domesday Survey of 1086 records Shipton in several holdings.

Later records trace Church's trade in a coast that was definitely under some pressure by the ocean.

The Friends of Cromer Museum have put together a documentary-ish timeline.

Churchyard reported as damaged by the sea in 1317, the church threatened again in 1337, and permission in 1390 to collect duties and build a pier or a harbor structure.

All right.

I want to head towards Cromer, which is that way along the coast, because there is an important landscape feature.

that I want to show you, which I think will help to sort of just reveal to us the power of the ice.

We already see a bit of it here, I think, in this contorted drift.

Let's

head

to Cromer.

All