23 January 2006
Surrounded by flint, but lost in Admiration
In the Norfolk countryside it is easy to get lost – if only in Admiration, which, in case you were wondering, is near East Carleton. Maps are useful, but it’s hard to make what appears to be the distance on the map correspond with feet on the ground.
The group I occasionally walk with has introduced an added complication, in that the miles walked vary according to who is measuring them. There is the brisk Martin stride and the measured Parker step, not to mention the occasional Robinson pedometer. And they all work out differently. Nothing ever seems to quite add up.
Still, a walk is a walk. You never know what you will find, apart from mud. In the wide open fields of Admiration the other day, for instance, there were a lot of flint tools.
As far as I’m concerned, every bit of flint is a tool. I have never seen a bit of flint that is not a tool, because they are all sharp or hammer-shaped. If by some freak of nature a piece of flint does not look like a tool, you simply have to throw it in the air above a hard surface, and when it comes down it will be a tool.
I offer this observation to archaeologists: it may be a breakthrough. Meanwhile I am puzzling over the exact meaning of a solitary post discovered far from Admiration – in the forests of Breckland, to be precise.
It bore just one exciting word: THE. Pretty definite. I suspect that further posts were planned bearing words like WAY and HOME, but government money ran out. Of course, I could be wrong. Not as wrong, however, as the two friendly gentlemen in a van who pulled up next to me just outside East Carleton and asked me if I knew where Carleton St Peter was.
All sorts of Carletons flicked through my mind. Lower East Carleton just up the street; Carleton Rode, down near Bunwell; and Carleton Forehoe, the other side of the A11. But Carleton St Peter?
Confusingly, the old church at East Carleton was St Peter’s, but that’s another story. I couldn’t pin Carleton St Peter down in my ageing mind…until the van had disappeared round the corner, looking for someone who knew something. Then it clicked.
Carleton St Peter was somewhere else entirely – out Loddon way, near Ashby St Mary. Bit of a mess really. It’s time the county council did something useful and got all those Carletons grouped together tidily, or at least on the same side of Norwich. Then we’ll know where we are. Maybe.
Parking signs not exactly watertight
It doesn’t come as a surprise any more when I arrive at the University of East Anglia to find nowhere left to park my car. But I was slightly taken aback the other day to discover a new notice blocking the entrance to the car park. “UEA full,” it read. “Use Costessey Park and Ride.”
Just the sort of help you need when you’re late for an appointment. It’s not as if Costessey Park and Ride is anywhere close. In fact it’s rather like arriving at the outskirts of Norwich to find a sign reading “Norwich full. Use King’s Lynn.”
If the UEA authorities just want to put visitors off I suggest they switch to a more inventive sign, like the one I pass regularly when travelling through a town in Hertfordshire. It reads: “Hitchin Swimming Centre overflow parking.” Not exactly watertight, but lots of fun, I should imagine.
Giant squirrels blameless in speed limit fiasco
As part of my campaign to alert readers to the forces of nature, I can report that a giant grey squirrel has been spotted by a reader in Rackheath. Happily, it was not exceeding the speed limit, but the same could not be said of drivers approaching Norwich on the A11.
They are greeted by another force of nature – the local scamera partnership, who recently realised that drivers were habitually ignoring the 30mph limit and workers on the road were being “endangered”.
The mobile speed camera immediately raked in so much money that it proved to be embarrassing, and complaints were made. As usual someone wrote to the EDP and said that drivers would not be fined if they obeyed the law.
Of course this is a really helpful observation. But it is even more helpful to ask why drivers break this limit. And the answer is that the limit has been imposed in such a way that it is quite obvious to drivers that it is inappropriate.
For weeks drivers approaching Norwich were asked to drive at 30mph down a clear dual carriageway for more than two-thirds of a mile for no apparent reason. No workers, and very few giant squirrels. When you have been driving for many miles at 70mph, this feels ludicrously slow.
No good driver minds driving slowly to ensure the safety of others. In this case, a 40mph limit much closer to the roundabout might have been appropriate and would surely have been observed by most. Instead we have a limit that is much too slow for much too long.
Even a squirrel could see that. Of course squirrels don’t need the money.
How coast erosion could have been avoided
Another reader has shown interest in the ground-breaking suggestion by the West Norfolk Mountain Rescue Team that people bring back soil and stones from holiday to construct a hill in the area. He prefers to remain anonymous, but he writes: “When my boys were youngsters they would always bring stones and rocks back from the seaside. I realised at the time that if this was going on with other families, in time England would become a large hill.
“To rectify this I made the boys take stones and rocks back on our visits to the seaside. Had other families done this I'm sure there would have been no problem with coast erosion.”
It is hard to argue with this.