Bacton

We were not sure whether this holiday was going to go ahead or not. First the dog got an abscess at the back of his eye which the vet thought may need surgery. Then we found ourselves without a Motor home (it’s a long story). I rang up Anthony at Don Amott Leisure.

“ I need a motor home in a hurry, what have you got?”

“ What are you looking for, and how much do you want to spend?”

I told him

It took him a few minutes to stop laughing

“You’ll be lucky” he said, “but leave it with me

Half an hour later he came back

“I’ve got one I can let you have but it’s a good couple of grand over your budget”

"I didn’t really want to spend too much, I’ll have to recount the pennies”

“Oh hang on, go on the website and take a look at this Elnagh Slim, it’s immaculate, and I can get under your budget”

We had an Elnagh before and had a lot of trouble with so I wasn’t too keen

We were in the middle of a heat wave in early July, and the combination of hot clammy weather and the thought of telling Kim that we couldn’t go on holiday was beginning to make me really sweat

"Its got air conditioning”

"We’ll take it!”

At the same time the dog had improved and was almost back to his normal self, so with enough antibiotics to last 10 days or so we decided to chance it.

It was quite strange coming back to Cromer 11 months after we had left it at the end of last years holiday. It was inevitable the we’d start looking for familiar landmarks from last year, however the only one I was interested in was the signpost for Mundesley, the next stop on our mission.

We were stopping at a no frills campsite 600 yards from the beach at a place called Bacton. It was a very hot humid day and so before anything else we had to roll out the awning and get the sun-shades in place.

The last time we were here the locals were fighting off a foreign invasion of ladybirds that had swamped the Norfolk coast. The fight was obviously won because we didn’t see a single ladybird, but instead were swamped with about a million little black flies. It’s a shame there weren’t any ladybirds as they would have had a real feast.

Later on that day we asked a local about the ladybirds.

"Well you see, they were foreign ladybirds what had flew in across the sea” he told us, “which was bad for the indigenous species

“What like these black flies?” I asked

“Yes exactly”

So there we were: these flies were a real nuisance getting in my skin, clothes, food etc, but at least they were our very own English flies.

After 3 attempts at pitching the motor home and then breaking camp to escape the flies we eventually managed to set up on a nice edge of the field. We had a place that was marginally better than the other 2 we tried, as we were now only swamped by flies in their hundreds instead of thousands. We got the chairs out, sat down and then both realised something was missing.

“Where’s the dog?” we both asked in a panic.

Whilst we had been messing about trying to find the perfect pitch, Ollie had managed to work out how to get through the 600 yards of hedges and fields to the beach, and had a great time in the sea and sand. We knew this because, as we were frantically searching the campsite and surrounding fields, he turned up dripping wet, covered in sand and looking very pleased with himself. He started jumping up trying to get us to follow him to show us what he’d found. It was as bad as having the kids with us.

At this point I’m supposed to write about the village of Bacton, but to be honest there is really very little to write about other than an old ruin and lots of holiday cottages. There really was nothing there. Of course it did have the fabulous sandy beach which is what we have come to expect on the East coast. The dog led us to a big blue ocean and a sandy beach containing a naked man lying with his backside in the air. As I said: typical of the East coast.

The following morning was one of the rare occasions when I woke really early and so decided to take the dog a walk. I was so glad I did; it was a beautiful July morning, with bright sunshine and no breeze. We walked for an hour without seeing another soul until we got to the far end of the beach by the Gas terminal, when we walked passed a guy walking his dog. “Morning” I said enthusiastically. He never said a word nor even looked at me. This really winds me up; what does it cost to say Good Morning to someone? If ever this blog gets converted into a best selling book and a multi million dollar movie with my part being played by Johnny Depp (Kim wishes!) or someone, then the man with the beard and cigarette in his mouth walking his St Bernard at 7.30 on July 11 2010 will be named and shamed forever ha!

This was now our 2^nd holiday in Norfolk and we had not yet visited a windmill, which is apparently something you have to visit when in Norfolk. Fortunately for us we had passed a very well restored windmill as we had gone through Mundesely. We couldn’t stop because the car park wasn’t big enough for the Motor home. Luckily enough our daughter Laura had just turned up to join us so we commandeered her car and ventured down to the windmill. As structures go it was a very fine example of a Norfolk windmill: it’s just a shame it wasn’t a working one, as the engineer in me would have loved to see it in operation. I had to make do with a few old drawings and black and white photos of turn of the century windmill people.

We were in the middle of the hottest weekend of the year so far and so the afternoon was spent lounging around in the campervan. Only the dog seemed to have any energy so Laura, while sat reading her magazine, would occasionally throw a ball for the dog. Then she suddenly realised it had been a good 5 minutes since she’d thrown the ball. “Where’s the dog gone?” she said in a panic. Just then a very wet looking dog ran back in to the site. He’d obviously got a bit hot chasing his ball and so he decided to run down to the sea to cool off! Whilst Laura was scolding him for running off I was admiring him for being a very clever dog.