There’s a reason it’s called ‘the garden of England’ – Kent is full of chocolate box villages. Driving through scenery like this is a slow process if you brake for photo opportunities.
Posts Tagged With: holiday
The Garden of England
Categories: Photography, Travel, Vibe Monitor
Tags: cottage, England, English countryside, Faversham, holiday, Kent, nature, south, tradition, vacation
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California Dreaming
California, England. It’s not where you expect to find a California, but there it is, clinging to the Norfolk cliffs, next to Scratby. We would tell our schoolfriends we went to California every year on vacation, slightly forgetting to mention it was 6000 miles to the right of the one in the States. And marginally less glamorous. Or hot. This is the Pleasure Beach in Great Yarmouth, the highlight of every childhood summer holiday.
Yours truly squinting in the sun. Some very lovely old beach huts here, next to the rackety old fun fair.
A relic from the 70s, when the world was high on Star Wars and the fair was a riot of screaming colour and noise.
The Pink Panther says it all, really, doesn’t he? Still here.
I’m saying goodbye to Scratby, driving off through the chocolate-box villages to Kent.
Episodes one, two and three are here ‘if you’re fond of sand dunes and salty air…’
Categories: Design, Photography, Random, Travel
Tags: beach hut, England, fun fair, Great Yarmouth, holiday, Mark Wallis, Norfolk, Scratby, Star Wars, The Pink Panther, vacation
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Beach Rain
“Feel the rain like an English summer,
Hear the notes from a distant song.”
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Sometimes, when you’re stumbling along in wet sand, trying to take pictures of everything at once, a wonderful and rare mistake will become your best picture ever. Just make sure you say it was deliberate, and brush the sand off your clothes.
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Nothing calms the soul quite like a rainy beach, deck chairs flapping in the wind under a hide-and-seek sun.
Every morning at dawn, I sneak to the cliff edge to catch the sun rising. And every morning the famous Norfolk sunrise beats me to it. This is the closest I got…
See the start of this tale in The Time Travel Tourist, and episode two, Summer Salt.
Categories: Design, Photography, Random, Travel, Vibe Monitor
Tags: Beach, deck chairs, Great Yarmouth England, holiday, hut, Norfolk, Scratby, vacation
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Summer Salt
My sunny memories of childhood holidays in Norfolk have blurred slightly, like the faded glamour of an English seaside village. I’m the Time Travel Tourist, powered by nostalgia, jaunting back to the sand dunes and salty air of 1970s Scratby. Days were spent on bright windy beaches, and at night we retired to our charming, creaky wooden cottages on the cliff top.
I found a derelict cottage with all the original features, and I’m dreaming of a day when I can renovate it…
The sea is loud and feisty, with mournful fog horns and Bouy bells in the night, magical sounds to my childhood self, and just as hypnotizing to me now.
See the first episode The Time Travel Tourist, and also Beach Rain
Categories: Design, Photography, Random, Travel
Tags: England, Great Yarmouth, holiday, Norfolk, nostalgia, Scratby, seaside, Summer, vacation
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The Time Travel Tourist
This week The Vibes is being beamed to you from Norfolk on the east coast of England. Some of my earliest memories are of family holidays in Scratby, a tiny seaside village perched on a crumbling cliff edge.
I loved the rackety little wooden cottages huddled round village greens, staring out to sea. We could step out of the door and stumble down crooked cliff steps which fell away to the beach. Everything seemed to be peeling and dilapidated, scoured by the wind and the sea, bleached by the sun. Salty air and sand in our hair.
Every year we travelled to Scratby, taking our friends and relatives, until I left home in my teens and Norfolk became a happy memory. Twenty five years later I’m back, reliving my childhood, exploring Norfolk’s charming, flat beauty.
See the next episodes, Summer Salt and Beach Rain
the vibes 