The girl and the six-strong crew went to sea in a beautiful red sail boat
Octavia Pollock explores North Norfolk's salt marshes, hidden creeks and open sea aboard a traditional craft.
On the horizon, strange trees danced, a mirage of slender trunks marking the distant Norfolk coast. All around was blue water, stippled with white horses whipped up by the brisk north-easterly, yet directly before us was clean, smooth sand, an East Anglian desert island.
Walking up a slight rise to where wind-blown ripples sheltered puddles of warm seawater, we glimpsed the oddest element of this otherworldly scene: fishing trawlers, bright red and green with tiny figures in oilskins scratching around their hulls. Unable to resist, we set off towards them, six girls in shorts and jumpers, giving the fishermen, no doubt, something of a turn.
The writer takes the helm.
They were cocklemen, out on the sandbank revealed by low tide in the middle of the Wash, that great sweep of bay between Lincolnshire and Norfolk where King John once lost his baggage train full of treasure. All summer long, they will beach their cockleboats here, raking around in a large circle and then shovelling up cockles into bags, just as their kin have done for thousands of years, bar the hydraulic lift to hoist the ton bags on board. They might get two or three tons in one trip, making enough to render working in wintertime unnecessary.
Tough and sturdy, they received our interest with some bemusement, refusing any payment when we asked if we could scoop up some cockles for lunch. Duly armed with a towel-full of shells, curved and fluted and mottled in sandy hues, we set off back to where we could see the mast of our vessel, eager to offer up our haul for lunch.
We had sailed to this desert island aboard Victorious, a 42-foot-long, gaff-rigged wooden cockleboat built in Kings Lynn in 1932, wide of beam and shallow of draught. Her captain, Henry Chamberlain, a former Royal Marine, had restored her to perfection and now, with a white-painted hull, red sails, long bowsprit and steeply raked stern, she is a beautiful boat. The hold once intended for the catch has two bunks and a tiny galley, where our foraged cockles sizzled.
The sandbanks in The Wash are large intertidal sand and mud bars. They emerge and submerge rapidly with the fast-moving tides and provide crucial resting spots for large colonies of common and grey seals, as well as vital feeding grounds for thousands of wading birds.
After boarding at Fosdyke in Lincolnshire, where a huge boatshed sheltered vessels in various states of repair, we had motored up the River Welland to the Wash against the wind as bacon sizzled and enamel cups of tea and coffee were circulated.
As a group, we had bonded in the hunting field and were thus well used to wild weather and winds. Sarah Kate Byrne, stylist to the stars of ITV Racing and side-saddle doyenne; Rosie van Cutsem, whose clothing brand Troy London (now closed, sadly) was worn by The Princess of Wales; Anna Pope, artist and co-founder of Watatunga Wildlife Reserve; Rachael Hampton, world-class dentist; and Anna Sands of Bodney Hall Farm holiday rentals, made up our crew, guided by Henry and his mate, David (Tomo) Thompson.
We swiftly settled in for a day when phones were used only for taking (hundreds of) photographs, when the wind tangled hair and stirred the blood and when stories were shared of hair-raising adventures at sea, none of which, thankfully, concerned Victorious. She stoically crested each wave, before settling comfortably into her sandy berth on the sandbank and we set off on our cockle mission.
Rachael Hampton and Sarah Kate Byrne, and a sailor-made feast.
Lunch was thus served on a beach as private as any billionaire’s Caribbean island — and what a lunch it was. Henry had gathered an array of goodies, including tomato soup, Baron Bigod cheese, the lightest focaccia I have ever tasted from Bert Blaize at North Norfolk Cellars in Wells-next-the-Sea and Matt Gregory’s Coral 2024 natural wine, all complemented, of course, by our fresh-as-can-be cockles, dusted with North Norfolk Sea Salt from Brancaster.
On our return, we coasted before the north-easterly, sails hoisted, cheerfully plunging into the waves. I accepted the tiller with some trepidation, having not sailed for some years and then with a wheel, but Henry kept a close eye and it wasn’t long before I had the feel of her. She was heavy, but eager and responded well to the helm.
Succeeding buoys came up swiftly; it’s astonishing how fast one can sail with wind and tide together and it wasn’t long before we were approaching the mouth of the river, into which we shot like an arrow finding its mark. Mudbanks slipped by as seals popped up to say farewell and cormorants, so swift beneath the water and so ungainly out of it, flapped out of our way.
Fortunately, Henry took the helm for the last bit, under engine power, with a heart-stopping bit of manoeuvring that saw Victorious spun on her heel and urged alongside the jetty as the tide threatened to smash her into the boat moored behind.
Safely tied up, we breathed a sigh of relief and repaired to The Ship Inn nearby for a pint of Guinness. The proprietor, Fiona Carter, is a great champion of Fosdyke history, with black-and-white photographs of past ships (including one whose skipper had fallen foul of that tide and crashed into the bridge) arrayed in the restaurant. She and her husband, David, have long supported the shipyard and it is reassuring to find in this unassuming corner of Lincolnshire a place where traditional shipbuilding skills are flourishing.
Victorious is not Henry’s only boat. He has several others, all redolent of Norfolk’s maritime past, with two more for the open sea: My Girls, a 20-foot-long lug-rigged crab boat, and Salford, a 30-foot-long open lug-rigged whelker. They can both traverse the saltmarshes and creeks of Wells-next-the-Sea, too, together with two mussel flat boats and Mabel, a 16-foot-long beach boat based in Blakeney. Aboard these, guests can explore the tidal saltwater creeks of the coast as they wish, stopping to swim or feast or simply snooze in the sun. I will certainly be returning for more coastal explorations, but for now, I will sleep soundly with the taste of those cockles still salty on my tongue.
Coastal sails for six people start from £595; saltmash sails for four people from £395. A sail aboard Victorious for eight people is £895. Visit the Coastal Exploration Company website for more information.
