The lowdown from Hellesdon

View from the Wensum

This is a typical page from Hidden Riverside Norwich. The whole point of being in a canoe of course is that you can capture images and angles that are impossible from the bank.

This bridge is a real survivor. It's one of the Midland and Great Northern line originals - in other words it used to carry trains, now it has a lighter load of pedestrians and cyclists.

You'll find it on Marriotts Way just south of Hellesdon Road. As a canoeist I float my boat just upstream from here and head in to Norwich city centre. The variety of views and landscapes in that 2 or 3 odd-miles is amazing.

Hidden Riverside Norwich - revealed at last

I'VE been going through page proofs this weekend - all 144 pages of Hidden Riverside Norwich. I'm not likely to see a hard copy until next Spring, but nevertheless it's a big moment. As ever Halsgrove have done a super job with the design and layout. Roll on 2016...

* Hidden Riverside Norwich, £14.99 and likely to be in Norfolk's book shops from May 2016

Saying goodbye to Window Coffee

Hayley Draper at The Window Coffee  

I WAS very sorry to hear that Window Coffee in Wensum Street shut down at the end of July. It was undoubtedly the best coffee shop in Norwich. I had interviewed Hayley Draper for my next book. Here's what you would have read: 

"Somehow squeezed in between a kebab joint and an estate agent, you could easily overlook Hayley Draper’s cafe.

For a start The Window Coffee is tiny. Really tiny. Something like 12ft by 10ft. That means there’s only room for about half a dozen people around the coffee table. But sheer proximity does funny things to you.  It’s virtually impossible to ignore your neighbour here – and Hayley is adept at finding the right thread to draw two strangers together.

But the sense of instant community is just a nice side effect. Really, it’s all about the coffee and Hayley knows her stuff. Above the adverts for “flavoursome house blends” are certificates from a recent UK Barista of the Year awards ceremony.  She’s come a long way since she made her first coffee in a café in Diss aged 14. She did try other jobs, but nothing else gave her the same buzz.

“This is what makes me happy,” she says with a simple shrug.

The Window Coffee at 25 Wensum Street was born in February 2009 and it’s gone from strength to strength.

“I don’t have to do any marketing now,” she says. “People come to me. If you put ‘best coffee in Norwich’ into Google I pop up. Google, Trip Advisor, the internet is very important.”

Hang around for a while and you start to see the secrets of her success. There’s a constant flow of chatter with the mocha and the lattes. There are no “Have a Nice Day” platitudes, just the thrill of proper conversation.

The grinder grinds, the steam wand froths and you notice that the small Mona Lisa in the window carries a flat white in her hand. No wonder her smile is enigmatic. The ipod is on “shuffle”. Something Adele-ish follows something Chopin-ish. Another double decker roars past.

 “Good things happen after good coffee” runs the slogan on another wall. Hayley Draper was clearly in her element."

Ringland to Taverham by canoe

ON A summer’s day River Green at Ringland quickly fills up with picnickers and paddlers. But within a hundred yards the canoeist leaves civilisation behind. The river winds left and a long row of elegant poplars demand to have their pictures taken, their trunks reflecting in the crystal clear water.

Then the Wensum begins a long lazy meander. Cattle graze the meadows to the left while horses are stabled on the right bank. Today, an early June day that felt like hot July, I heard one solitary cuckoo and caught a glimpse of a retreating kingfisher. Banded demoiselle damselflies flitted from leaf to leaf by the dozen, the blue-black band across their wings making the males instantly recognisable.

Swans too were on patrol. Give them a wide berth and you’ll be fine. They are very territorial, especially when protecting a nest. If they curve their neck back and half raise their wings, watch out. It’s called “busking” and it’s a warning to keep away. I’ve yet to use my paddle, but I’ve felt safer with it on a couple of occasions.

Nature has provided a new bridge on this stretch. A poplar has fallen clean across the river, creating a dam to be by-passed. Was it the wet winter of 2013/14 that did the damage? Then the river gets more claustrophobic. Dodge and weave around low-lying branches of alder and white willow.

Costessey Lane gets closer in time to catch a view of the white-washed Beehive Lodge, originally one of the lodges for the long-demolished Costessey Hall. Then road and river diverge, leaving longer and longer gardens for the selection of static caravans and houses which lie undetected by all but us river-users. Almost every one has its own home-made staithe, even if it’s just scaffold poles and aluminium ladders. And then the country becomes more open again. To the left, the grounds of Taverham Hall prep school, to the right, the Taverham  Mill nature reserve. After three miles on the river, the sluices here mean our journey’s at an end.

Turn around in the slower water dominated by yellow water-lilies and head for home.

* Non-natives to Ringland need a £5 annual licence to launch from River Green in Ringland. See the Ringland Parish Council website for details.

Ringland: where was the Union Jack?

RINGLAND has just the one pub now, The Swan with its idyllic position at the end of The Street, overlooking the Wensum.

But in the old days there was another. It gloried in the name of the King of Prussia until 1915 when some local soldiers ripped the sign down. Clearly the landlord then decided that a name-change to The Union Jack might do wonders for trade in the context of the First World War. 

The same boozer with its different name apparently flourished right through until the mid-1960s, but where was it? Looking at this photo my money would be on The Street up towards the church? Can anyone tell me for sure? Please email me at sanddsilk@btinternet.com if you can help.

Drayton Old Lodge: 1914 and all that

REMEMBER “EBR” inscribed into the wall at Drayton Old Lodge? Well, after a bit of help, I’ve found the man those initials belong to. The details confirm that the Old Lodge was indeed built as private house rather than the Nurses Home which it later became.

The timing is quite poignant. Here was a successful man returning to Britain to build a mansion complete with grand hall, billiards room and drawing room. But as the first bricks were being laid, the First World War was erupting in Flanders. The house – with its sculleries and servants’ quarters - was being built for a world which would no longer exist by 1918. Just look at nearby Costessey Hall – demolished in 1920 - to see what happened to several old estates in this era.

Clearly Drayton Old Lodge did survive, though I haven’t yet been able to establish exactly when it became a Nurses Home. The late 1920s or early 1930s is my best guess at the moment.

Finally who was EBR? Well, you’ll have to wait till the book gets published for the full details.

Drayton: the ghost of a great poet

IN the middle of a heath, an incongruous clump of pampas grass. Look closer and you might be able to see that the land is suspiciously flat between the pampas and the copse. It’s the site, the exact footprint, of the old David Rice Psychiatric Hospital. It was built in the late 30s of the last century and demolished in the mid-noughties of this one. Who would have thought that an ornamental plant would outlive the buildings it was designed to grace?

Now owned by The Lind Trust, this 33 acre site was going to be home to a massive new church. Plans fell through after an acrimonious row with many neighbours. Its future is still uncertain but in the meantime the Trust is more than happy for us walkers to explore its gentle contours. Locals can probably see it returning to nature almost month by month.

It’s been much in my mind this week after discovering a little bit more about the David Rice’s most famous patient. According to the experts, Francis Webb (1925-1973) was one of the best poets Australia has ever produced. But he suffered from terrible mental health problems, so much so that he spent many months here, accidentally getting to know the Wensum valley in the process.

Thanks to the good old Millennium Library I’ve now borrowed a 1969 collection of his poems (It’s an inter-library loan all the way from Bucks, smelling beautifully of second-hand book shops and complete with loan dates stretching back decades. Excellent.)

I thought it would be his poems on named Norfolk places which would get me, instead this vision of a lonely night inside the David Rice knocks you sideways with its raw, melancholic power:

“The side-room has sweated years and patience, rolls its one eye

Skyward, nightward; hours beyond sleep I lie;

And the fists of some ardent Plimsoll have laboured this wall

Clear of its plaster beside my chosen head.

Someone murmurs a little, dithers in bed,

Against that frail call

Are imminent the siege-works of a huge nightfall.”

There’s much more, but you get the idea and I better be careful of copyright. His great champion in this country is Cameron Self of Literary Norfolk fame. Cameron knows his stuff. Read his summary to get a proper idea of what a big name Webb is in Australia, but also how Norfolk should claim him as one of our own.

I found it slightly eerie walking across this site even before Bucks came up trumps. The demo guys have done such a thorough job that there is very little evidence left of the hospital. But nevertheless the odd drain cover – and pampas grass - means that you somehow feel the absence of a building.

Throw in the “siege-works of a huge nightfall” and it’s safe to say you probably won’t find me up here after dark.