Between the devil and the deep blue sea suggests two equally undesirable, even dangerous alternatives but there is little that’s devilish about Cromer on this June morning and the sea, not blue at all but a delicate shade of khaki fading to palest mushy pea and then to a very dilute milk chocolate, keeps up its hypnotically soothing motion. The place’s other colours are predominantly primary, plastic blue and yellow buckets, the seductive array of sherbet fruits and pineapple chunks, liquorice torpedoes and dolly mixtures (and remember cherry lips?!) in the jars in Amy’s Sweet Shop window on West Street (the shop boasts over 200 types of sweet), the crimson of the beach huts replicated in sun-reddened skin.
I’m not quite in step with the majority here, my waterproofs and thermal layers out of place beside bare shoulders and flip-flops but there’s a brash friendliness which is hard to resist and a kind of – is it innocence? There is still the pier, of course – Cambridge House, my B&B of choice, looks directly out at it. It claims to have the only end of the pier show, complete with ‘sumptuous costumes’, in the world. There are several tattoo parlours and caravan parks, lots of dogs and a preponderance of well-tanned shaven heads and beer bellies. And northern accents, of course. On a long-ago visit, when Jack was quite small, we watched a car-hauling event in the annual Strongest Man competition (apparently there is also a ‘truck pull’) although this is not just a celebration of brute strength: the contest raises huge sums for Sport Relief.
Photo: David Bale Now the middle classes are claiming territory here – witness the article in The Guardian’s travel supplement a couple of weekends ago which actually prompted my visit. It mentioned the Rocket House Cafe which I’m proud to have discovered for myself some years since and which would be perfect for watching the sun go down over the sea if it were only open in the evenings. Also the No.1 fish restaurant, owned by Michelin-starred chef Galton Blackiston, with its international ‘Upstairs at…’ On both recent visits, I’ve settled for the plain and simple fish and chips on the ground floor. Next to Cambridge House, the Red Lion has stepped confidently into the twenty-first century with a huge choice of beers, gins and whiskies and an innovative menu: my baby aubergines with lentil dahl and bhajis are both unusual and delicious. Most recently Grey Seal Coffee Roasters of Glandford have added Cromer to their list with a smart new coffee house next to the Co-op supermarket on the High Street.
It’s not just recent gentrification, though. My visit to the deli (eat your heart out Burnham Market in terms of size alone!) has me excitedly choosing from an impressive range of local teas – I go for Norfolk White Lady, a blend of Pai Mu Tan white tea with pomegranate and cranberry. I’m surprised to learn that the business has been there for 13 years. On my last evening I stumble upon three second-hand bookshops, two of them at least clearly also long-established. I really wish I’d found them sooner.
Arriving at the station on my way home takes me past Bouncers Nightclub and bar, still boarded up since my last time here, a reminder of the frequent dilapidation of coastal resorts like these. I toyed with the idea of buying a house here a year or two ago, actually found an affordable Victorian terrace on the main street into the town. It looked quite appealing online but I turned up to take a look on a cold grey day, the handful of tourists struggling to make the best of it. It reminded me most of those north-east Cumbrian outposts, not overtly hostile but faces turned into the wind, preoccupied with the business of survival. I’d had enough of that. This time, the weather kinder, the walking satisfying, it feels less daunting. Still I am saddened to see the art and sculpture trail along the concrete wall of Sheringham’s sea front faded almost to invisibility although I gather inland it’s a different story and appropriately-named artist Colin Seal has again been busy. I love the boldness of these places, though! Seeming to defy gravity, with flights of steps precipitous enough to turn my legs to jelly and bay windows suspended high over the ocean, they perch on the cliffs with a confidence that is surely bravado – how long before they slip into the sea?
In part I suppose it’s a question of where we put our money. The Norfolk Wildlife Trust’s Cley Marshes Visitor Centre just along the coast, built at a cost of £650,000 and opened in 2007, seeks to minimise its impact on the surrounding area through a variety of ‘green’ technologies and materials. It has recently benefited from a £2.6 million revamp involving the purchase of 140 extra acres of marshland, creating the Simon Aspinall Education Centre and a new outside viewing deck, and has some 100,000 visitors a year. There’s surely no contest. Despite today’s runners and walkers and the clean beaches initiative, historically Cromer can’t really claim to be eco-friendly – indeed the impulse behind the 19th-century development of the town was more about overcoming the challenges presented by the natural environment and establishing a foothold than looking after it – and it’s just not posh enough for some. But its egalitarian aspect suits me. Between the hordes of elderly visitors hunkering down for a night of bingo in the Hotel de Paris and the chap who enjoys a can of beer and a cigarette breakfast below my window on my last morning, somehow I have space to breathe. Or is it that my own persistent sense of dislocation, of being lodged somehow on the edge betwixt and between, sits easier on these lone and level sands? Though there’s no wreckage in sight, unreconstructed man is not always pretty but ‘the thing itself’ – at least it’s real.
Back in Cambridge: the guy who pushed past me on the ‘replacement bus’ pushes past me again on the station platform. As the Citi 1 pulls away, from the window I spot a figure with a huge backpack, not unlike mine, slumped against it where he sits on the pavement, head in his chest, red sun hat pulled low, a Sainsbury’s orange carrier at his side, outside one of the swish new hotels. Despite his luggage, he’s not going inside, or indeed anywhere else, any time soon. Cambridge’s smug middle-class exclusiveness leaves me feeling out of step and really rather reluctant to step back inside the bubble. Until, that is, we reach the city centre and the bus is invaded by a motley crew, ten or twelve in all, a handful of loud men who head to the back of the bus, kids all armed with mini-machine guns on repeat fire who climb upstairs and a selection of young women with smaller children in buggies who commandeer the front section. Military metaphors? Yes I know, it does feel slightly threatening, if only for the sense that they seem entirely comfortable in their own skins, keen to claim their space and oblivious to others. Somehow you wouldn’t want to cross them. Or is it just that they are in high spirits having spent the day at the Town and Country Fair? The women proceed to share their picnic – sandwiches, crisps, sausages – amongst the families (my healthy-eating sensibilities squirming squeamishly!) When I stand up for my stop, almost clunking the nearest woman with my rucksack, she turns to grin at me with a mouthful of ruined teeth.
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