Not so happy Happisburgh

We headed for the coast today and ended up at Happisburgh. I've been going there ever since I could drive a car (which, as I've just insured a car I know to be 22 years), but every time we head that way I can never remember quite where it is. I think my brain is now full, so to take onboard new information it has to lose information, like routes to the seaside.

It was the first Norfolk beach Olive went to according to Caryn, which is probably right as it's always been one of my favourites. I thought we took her to Wells first, but my memory is currently dumping that sort of information. Have I mentioned that?

Anyway, Happisburgh was a sorry sight today. It's very rapidly disappearing into the sea. Costal Concern Action Group have a fantastic website which is well worth 15 minutes of your day if you'd like to know more. You hope something can be done, but you fear it's all a bit King Kanute.

The huge wooden groynes - erected in the late Fifties - have completely failed. They were still intact when we moved here five years ago, as was the slipway down the beach. The lifeboat station is still at the top of the rapidly receding cliff with no way to the sea. Bizarre.


To get to the sea on our first visit with Olive, you had to climb wooden steps over the groynes. I guess they'd have been eight, maybe 10 feet tall. Today, the top of them are waist-height, the rest is buried under beach. That the whole lot is going to be gone before our daughter makes double figures is a sobering thought.

Bicycle weekend, part two

After Luke and Daphne's high jinks in Waitrose the other week, it seems that this has become the way to travel - Luke on the bike, Olive on the back.

Bicycle weekend, part one

We made our first trip of the year to High Lodge this weekend. The glorious sunshine made for perfect biking weather and as Olivia does swimming lessons on Saturday morning (in the pool, 8.30am, we are revising our thinking on that one after Easter) and Caryn tends to work now on Sunday mornings (7am start!), I'm not getting out on the bike so much. At all actually.

We pootled round the 10km track which was very pleasant. Really must go on my own and try the red run, and when I'm not so fat and unfit, the black run which actually sounds quite scary.

Anyway, artful picture of the wife I thought.

Good post? This way please...

We're getting terribly lazy.

Click here...

thank you.

The bucket has landed

We are a two-car family once again, well, a one-and-a-half car family. Despite our attempt to manage with just the one motor (it's been a year and half!), we spent the very last of our uh-oh fund (which really does mean uh-oh now) on this little bucket off of eBay.

Can't say I'd recommend buying a car, unseen, off eBay. Can't say I'd recommend buying a secondhand car full stop. But on the whole, I'm quite pleased with it.

It's got a 1.1 litre engine, which you can't help feel is a little excessive, but that's the point. Hacked around in it today and it drives like a go-kart. All I need now is my mechanic to give it the once over and not suck air in through his cheeks and tut at me for buying a heap.

Ask Caryn about it when you see her, she's been telling everyone it's a Fiat Concheekie... I wondered why the butcher was asking about it yesterday.