Beacon Hill – 103m / 338ft – 20/01/2020
After a week away supporting the Spine Race along the Pennine Way I felt fresh motivation and the need to kick start the County Tops challenge. With a few free days and decent weather forecast for the east of England I persuaded Cath to come along with me in the motorhome (still going by the name of Betty) to knock off a few of the easier ones.
So after a quick pack up of the van and some last minute route planning on Sunday evening we left on Monday morning in beautiful sunshine for the drive down through Lincolnshire and into Norfolk, destination East Runton. We were probably about 2 hours into the drive by the time I realised I had left my printed off maps at home. Clearly there was no turning back so it was going to be a bit of a memory exercise and heavy usage of the OS maps app on my phone. The pleasant drive into the flat fen lands of East Anglia terminated with us parking up near the beach as planned. Norfolk county top is the lowest in the UK outside of the City of London, but will be one of very few that actually involves an ascent from sea level.
We quickly got the walking gear on and set off westward along the pebbly beach towards West Runton. The pier at Cromer was visible to the east and some hardy surfers in wetsuits were profiting from the lovely weather.
The beach section was about a mile long, Cath enjoyed searching for fossils, PJ had a great time running around sniffing out things that only dogs can and I was map checking to make sure we had a suitable beach exit as the cliff top path was about 40 feet above us and showed plenty of signs of erosion and land slip caused by recent rainfall no doubt. There was indeed a road from the beach at West Runton which we took and then headed inland on a public footpath through a couple of fields before crossing the main road into the village.
Finding our way through some houses we crossed a railway line and then took some trails heading gradually upwards into woodland with a communications mast seeming to be our objective.
We came to a flatter clearing and a small road track which we followed back eastwards before arriving at another clearing marked with information about an old Roman settlement.
Just like that we had reached the highest point in the county of Norfolk, confirmed by a local walker whose dog evidently thought we had no right to be on his territory!! We could see the sea through the wide gap in trees, not a bad little spot to stop and take some photos.
With the mission to tick off another 4 county tops over the next 2 days only just begun and the daylight starting to fade we found another woodland track off the hill which eventually crossed a field and back into the village of East Runton.
Very notable was the architecture of houses with walls made of large pebbles cemented together. Overall quite nicely surprised by this place, an area we have never visited before, we found our way back to Betty after a decent walk, the rounded up 4.6 mile total distance just keeping me on my rule of 5 miles for each!
After a quick drink we were back on the road heading for Suffolk and looking for somewhere to stay overnight near Bury St Edmunds with temperatures forecast to fall below zero we would be putting Betty’s heating to the test.