We’d been to Titchwell Marsh on our trip back in 2009. But again, there was lots of winter weather involved and the trip was not entirely successful. So we were psyched to try it again!
SarahP had some great home-made granola, and this made an excellent breakfast with some vanilla yogurt and grapes. She also had gotten me some very good green tea, which has recently been legalized in England. And SarahE tried a gluten-free cereal Jim had gotten and was instantly hooked on that. So it was a good breakfast, and after that we hit the road for the North Sea.
Stopped at the store in the center of Great Massingham first and got some snacks, cheddar crisps and digestive biscuits. Then headed North past Houghton Hall and up cross-country to Thornham and the entrance to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds property in Titchwell Marsh.
This car park was already pretty full too, even on a Monday morning. But we weren’t surprised by this, it was a great time of year for watching birds, the weather was partly overcast and not too windy, and all of us older people were at the beach on a Spring day. The visitor center was having some work done, but they’d set up an admission table outside, and we were soon paid up and walking out through the woods, over the dike out to the salt marsh.
They’ve constructed a network of dikes to create freshwater lagoons for migratory birds, and have some “hides” for people to watch the birds. We saw lots of expensive optics being deployed, as you would expect at a wildlife refuge. We also saw a lot of wonderful birds, many with broods. I won’t try to catalog them all, because I’d fail miserably. But the most interesting to me were the black-headed gulls, the graylag geese, and the avocets. As we proceeded out towards the sea, over the main dike, the weather got windier and colder and I needed my windbreaker and gloves, though some people were suffering in shorts and t-shirts.
The path eventually led out onto the beach, over a line of dunes, and it was low tide again. The exposed beach was massive, and we immediately walked out to the edge of the sea. There was a huge array of wind turbines in the middle distance to our left, and another huge array, hull-down in the far distance to our right. In front of us were low-tide ledges interspersed with seaweed, lots of small shells, and holes for clams and worms. It was a lovely beach on a partly cloudy, slightly windy day. I’ve never seen more razor clam shells in my life, it was impossible to walk on the beach without crunching them underfoot. There were several old hunks of metal that, 80 years ago, had been WWII defenses.
We meandered down the beach to the East, towards where it dipped down to a deep, winding wash where the dikes and the marsh let out into the sea, which separated the PSPB site from Brancaster Beach. We walked up the wash a bit to see the common seals (called harbor seals in North America) and grey seals which take a break there. There were about 25 seals, sleeping and/or flapping their tails at each other, having a rest at low tide. I could imagine that when the incoming tide rushed in over the wide beach and filled the wash, the seals would take off again for the sea and a nice dinner.
Walked back up the beach past ruins of a WWII tank, crunching over shells, and to the entrance back to the dikes over the marsh. It actually became a hot day as we left the sea and re-entered the woods, and I stripped off several layers of clothing. We detoured down the Fen Trail, which became a boardwalk path, out over the swamp, where we saw even more varieties of birds, flowers, and reeds, then made it back to the visitor center (I bought a hat) and the car park.
Great walk, but we were getting a little peckish and were glad we had snacks in the car. Drove back to Great Massingham for a late lunch, which we ate out in their lovely garden on what had become a sunny, gentle day inland.
SarahP and Jim had mentioned two very good pubs near them, and we went to one for dinner, the Rose and Crown in Harpley. We got a very nice table in their almost deserted garden room; we had a great meal, and I had a couple of local beers. They had a curry special, which Jim and I went for, and I found it excellent. A very leisurely dinner, then we settled our bill and took off for some Cabo and/or TV before bed.
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