In Norfolk, life changes with an ever-shifting landscape

Even at 3am in high summer, it is not dark and, in the stillness out over the saltings, I can see gulls flying. They drift inland in threes and fours and the tide runs in beneath them. When daylight seeps into the sky at 4am, I find myself standing among thousands of empty crab shells. Somewhere down on the sea bed, out beyond the estuary, the ragged-clawed creatures have shed their exoskeletons to grow. Their old shells are ghosts among the spartina grass.

Cley next the Sea in north Norfolk, at the mouth of the River Glaven — named for the village of Glandford, once Gleamford, or ‘merry ford’ in Old English — looks to the North Sea. If you rain a straight line north from Cley, there would be nothing but ocean. That line would run clean between Svalbard and Greenland. Two thousand miles further, it hits the pack ice of the North Pole.

Between the 13th and 15th centuries, Cley was one of the busiest ports in Europe. The Glaven estuary ran deep then and could accommodate large merchant ships; Cley thrived on sending East Anglian wool to Europe. Now, the river is a narrow winding channel and its medieval might is difficult to imagine. From 1522, the estuary was drained to create grazing for cattle, a process that gradually led to the river silting up; it would be unrecognisable now to the merchants and Cley pirates who made their fortunes here.

Morning, as early birds catch worms

Shortly after 6am, three figures are sitting on upturned buckets on the sweeping shingle beach. As I draw closer, I see they are fishing. Each has a couple of rods set up with lines running into the waves. Roy, who tells me he has lived next to the sea all his life, has already caught three bass: ‘I’ve always liked fishing, it’s the air and looking to sea.’ He reels in his line, attaches a new worm onto the hook and casts again. The fishing has changed, he says: ‘We used to get codling all the time, but never bass. Now we do get bass, you see, and flounders if we’re lucky, perhaps a sole.’

Two shelduck fly past, low over the water. Now that Roy is getting older and his back starting to go, he relies on his brother to dig bait. ‘Where does he do that?’ I ask. Roy laughs. ‘You can’t be asking people where they dig their bait. We keep that a secret. It’s dug somewhere out on the mud.’ He nods in the direction of Blakeney and goes back to fishing.

Some 600 years ago, Blakeney and Cley were the same estuary with different channels, but whereas Cley was drained, Blakeney, to the west, has largely endured.

At 10.30am, four little children stand shrieking on the harbour wall there. They hold orange crabbing lines and croissants from the nearby bakery. One boy drops his croissant into the water and a herring gull swoops for it from a pile mooring.

Down on the mud, where water meets land, Trevor, a man in shorts and Wellington boots, is tending to his boat. He has a tub of white paint and is standing back to assess his work. Rosie, his little wooden dingy, ‘got a crack in it. I just put some white on there you see, after a bit of wood skin varnish, and then I’ll properly see to it this winter’. He usually only sails out to Blakeney Point. ‘I used to go to see the seals, but they’ve moved further on now.’ The seals, Trevor explains, were ‘on that gravel spit’ — he points to the horizon with his paint brush — ‘but then there was a big storm in the winter and it cut right through’. The whole estuary has changed and is always changing: ‘Up at the churchyard, there’s a wall that looks down over the Glaven and you can see big metal rings where the boats used to tie up. It’s nowhere near the sea now.’

Further out on the mud, an egret probes for crabs and, some 40 yards away, Will, a bait digger, is working away with his fork. The sand comes up black where he turns it over. He identifies the worm casts: ‘That tells you where the lugworms are.’ It isn’t a game of chance — he works the sand methodically, looking fixedly at the mud. When the worm comes up, he catches it between forefinger and thumb before it can disappear. Nodding into the distance in no particular direction, he points out that his work isn’t simply a means to an end: ‘When you’re out there digging, it’s just you.’

Midday, in the heat of the sun

At 1pm, I have lunch with David Diggens, who formerly ran the Norfolk Rivers Trust. We sit by a rusted house boat to eat crab and drink local wine. A wildfowler, fisherman and river conservationist, he knows the estuary as well as anybody: ‘The only reliable thing in life is constant change, and that is exactly what’s happening at Blakeney all the time.’

There is no wind and the temperature is approaching 30ºC. Small children in bad moods trudge by and passing dogs pant in the heat. ‘In terms of nature, the biggest changes here are the terns declining and the seals arriving,’ David observes. ‘The bass are now coming earlier and in greater numbers because of the change in sea temperature.’ The first grey seal pup birth was seen at Blakeney in 1988 and the population has been expanding ever since.

One of the great challenges, he explains, is the influx of tourists in the summer. Blakeney village runs largely on septic tanks — more people means more sewage. According to Bernard Bishop, wildlife warden at Cley for 40 years and still living in the house where he was born, there was once a famous mussel fishery here, but there are no edible mussels now.

After lunch, we walk out onto the mud and David picks samphire, which is just coming into season. He is an optimist and hopeful for wildlife in Norfolk. All it takes is for more people to care, but quite how you persuade them of the importance of biodiversity in all its forms is tricky, we agree. He hands me a small bunch of what is also known as St Peter’s herb, Peter being the patron saint of fishermen. ‘Only ever take as much samphire as you plan to eat that night for supper,’ he advises, a sentiment that goes for many things in life.

Late afternoon, in the cool of the church

The large wooden door of the Church of St Margaret’s, Cley, is open at 4pm, so I slip in and wander up the red pamment aisle. All around on the walls, but grown faint down the centuries, are medieval carvings of boats. It is thought they were etched by sailors as offerings before they set out on potentially dangerous voyages.

I sit in the back pew for a while listening to the wood pigeons cooing among the roof timbers — probably ships’ timbers originally — and then for an hour or so I sleep. When I wake, it is 5pm and I head out into the graveyard. The heat has passed and I wander among the headstones. There are local names, some I recognise, and at least three or four inscribed memorials for men lost at sea. Probably many more exist, but rain and time have eaten away at the stones.

I clamber sleepily over the back wall of the churchyard. The drop on the other side is lower than I anticipated and, when I pick myself up, I find I’m looking down over the Glaven, where the surrounding meadows are full of freshly cut hay. In spite of feeling that I’ve explored every inch of the church wall, I still can’t find Trevor’s ‘big metal rings where boats used to tie up’.

Eventide, as the long day closes

In the George & Dragon on the High Street in Cley, I order a pint, and then I order another, studying the black-and-white photographs of Cley past that hang on the pub walls. One, which must have been taken from a small plane in the early 20th century, shows the vast mud flats then in front of the village. In another, older still, there is a shooting party in a small boat, heading out from the famous Cley Windmill. It is 1886, the river is wide and the ladies are wearing hats.

At the bar, a semi-inebriated argument about how to pronounce Cley is taking place. ‘It is “clay”,’ says one of the old boys. ‘The tourists are right. You ought to say it like clay. That’s how they used to say it.’ Everyone laughs and I have no idea if he’s serious or otherwise (nowadays, it’s generally ‘cly’, to rhyme with ‘rye’).

By 10pm, it is getting dark and the town seems deserted when I wander down to the windmill. Bernard told me that the sails on the fantail used to clang in the breeze, keeping the whole village awake at night; now, they are chained up and there is silence. The Glaven, which runs beneath the windmill so slowly that you can hardly discern it is flowing at all, is little more than a trickle; it is possible almost to jump across it to the mud where the Randall family still cuts reed for local thatchers.

A warm wind rises and I listen to see if I can hear a bittern boom. The sky to the west is electric pink and a barn owl passes, hunting low in the half light.

This feature originally appeared in the July 15 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe