Walton on the Naze – 14th / 15th Oct 2006

Sorry - no photos with this report.

It had been some while since we’d been to Walton, and we felt guilty about leaving the beach hut for so long. So Annie booked us into the Naze Marine campsite, and after she’d been to the hairdresser on Saturday morning, we set off, going the A13 / A120 route, Traffic was okay, with no hold-ups, and we arrived in Walton at around 1.30pm.

It was difficult to find the reception, since the whole of the entrance area seemed to be filled with new static caravans, and lots of banners and flags. Annie saw the small sign, and we parked up.

Check-in was efficient, and we got a posh coloured folder, with all sorts of bumf in it, probably more to do with holiday homes and static caravans than anything useful. We had been told where the clubhouse was, and we had our temporary members’ tickets, which I suspected we wouldn’t be using.

We have been coming to Walton for a few years now. Unlike a lot of Walton visitors, neither of us had been born in East London, so we couldn’t claim a long pedigree of Walton holidays as some can, but we’d ‘found’ it when we were looking for a weekend retreat. Finances at the time dictated that we should buy a static caravan, and Annie and Paul had toured the area, looking at caravan parks. All of them had been rejected as being full of apprentice chavs. Annie and I had visited one (for which we’d needed to make an appointment) one Saturday morning, and it was horrible.

I suppose a lot of people like these places. Big, sprawling acreages of rectangular static caravans, swimming pools, clubhouses (with ‘entertainment’), and horrible East London chavs. In the Clacton area, there seems to be scores of these places. I know (personally) people who have places on these sites, and they seem to love them. They’re not for us.

We dutifully looked at the second-hand vans on sale, and it was depressing. Faded fabrics, dated design, and that nasty, ‘damp’ smell that you get as soon as you open the door. We left, promising to think about the special deal we’d been offered and, to ourselves, vowed never to return.

From the Ordnance Survey map, we located the caravan parks in Walton, and we found one, seemingly tucked out of the way on the ‘quiet’ side of Walton. We liked it as soon as we drove in. It was quiet, it was small (only 100 vans on-site), and what people we saw ‘looked’ quiet and friendly. We popped into the clubhouse, saw Brian, discovered he had a new van for sale and a plot for it to go on, and the deal was done.

We had that van for about a year, before the desire for a more permanent weekend residence coincided with a new build of some flats, which coincided with Annie seeing them and the sea view from the upstairs flats, and we called our mortgage advisor. In our few years visiting Walton, we’d come to know Naze Marine, without ever being inside it. We’d walked around the back a number of times, along a sea wall, and been amazed at how many caravans they had on site, and how crowded-in they were. The noises from the clubhouse were never really obtrusive, but you could hear them, and imagine the scene inside. Not our cup of tea.

We used the flat for two years, before we started renting it out. We’ve bought and sold a few beach huts, and currently own one in the rearmost row on South Cliff, so we really like visiting Walton. If we could link this with decent overnight parking, we’d visit more often.

Anyhow, back at Naze Marine, we followed the directions on the little map to the touring area. Our impression of the whole park was that it was very busy for this time of year. Maybe the unseasonably warm weather had brought people out, or maybe they were shutting their vans up for the winter. We slowly meandered our way through, and found the touring pitches. A slightly muddy field, sloping, with hookup points that had seen better days, and a toilet / shower block made from portacabins. It didn’t look good.

I parked up, and Annie went to look at the toilet block. I hooked up, levelled the van on the ramps, and Annie returned, telling me we weren’t staying. She said the toilets were disgusting, and the whole block was repulsive. Reasonable grounds for leaving, I suppose. We drove back to the reception area, Annie made her point, and we left.

We parked on the sea front, and walked to our beach hut. We’d forgotten just how pleasant it could be, sitting out on the deck, no noise except for the sound of the sea about fifty feet below us. We made a cup of tea, and read the papers.

Someone came by and stopped to chat, who turned out to be our new neighbour. We’d known the previous owners were thinking of selling, but we hadn’t known they’d actually sold it. He was a pleasant chap, slightly dotty, but very chatty, which suits us fine.

We met another of our ‘neighbours’, who had missed us in the two months or so since we’d been down. We chatted amiably for a while, and he left, and we returned to our newspapers. We mentioned the fact that we were without a pitch for the night, and he told us he’d seen campervans parked on the front at Frinton. We resolved to have a look.

If Clacton is chav city, then Frinton is Wrinkly Town. It is well known as a retirement town, perhaps like Eastbourne. The ferry port of Harwich is a few miles away to the north, and apparently people used to say “Harwich for the continent, Frinton for the incontinent.” Perhaps unkind, but the Frinton town council have made strenuous efforts to keep the town ‘olde-worlde’. Slightly famously, they forbid the selling of ice creams on the sea front, and for years, they wouldn’t allow a pub or a chip shop to open. They have a pub on the main street, but it can’t play music, and there’s a chip shop, but it’s tucked discreetly away down a side street.

When the temperature suddenly dropped at the beach huts, we packed up, and went back towards the town, stopping to buy fish and chips.

I do it every time. I get hungry, we decide to have perhaps one of my favourite meals, and I have a full portion of fish and chips. There’s nothing wring with that, but afterwards, it sits on my stomach like a huge, stodgy mess of potato and cod. I don’t know what it is, whether I’m already fat enough, and my body is trying to teach me a lesson, or maybe I’m getting old, and need to start cutting down on my food intake, so that I can become like an old person, spending hours fussing over a small plate of food, and then leaving half of it. I guess I’ll never learn, and the value of Rennie shares will continue to climb.

We drove along the front at Frinton, and as our beach hut mate had said, the signs say you can park for up to 24 hours. But then it said “no overnight parking, no camping”, which is strange. It didn’t make sense, but every sign along the front was the same. There’s a section at the far of the Greensward, where the parking bays are not angled like they are near to the centre, but narrower, and longitudinal. There were no signs here, and we wondered if this was a wild camping spot. Knowing Frinton as we did, it looked unlikely, so we headed home.

Just one more place to try, which was Homestead Lakes, where we’d spent our first night with Polly. It’s a lovely site, with hardstanding, hookup and water to every pitch, but when we arrived, we were told it was full. “A Caravan Club rally,” we were told. We were disappointed, until Annie asked “there’s nowhere else around here, is there?” The man thought for a second, and said: “There’s the Stranger’s Home – they usually have spaces behind the pub.” Music to our ears. He gave us directions, and off we drove.

Around twenty minutes later, we drew up outside The Stranger’s Home in Bradfield, and found our way to the camping field out the back. A nice, flat, green field, with about a dozen caravans, of which around half were occupied. We went into the pub, paid our £11, and parked the van on a pitch where there was hookup available.

We settled down for the night, and got good TV reception due to there being a TV transmitter mast a couple of miles away.

We enjoyed a pleasant night. The next morning, the showers, however, weren’t very pleasant, and only scored 2 out of 10 apiece. We were first to leave the site, just after 9am.

Burnham on Crouch - 7th / 8th Oct 2006

It seems to have been weeks since we went away. Well, it has been weeks since we went away. The last time that Polly went on her travels, she went to Whitstable, which seems positively eons ago. Three weeks. Too long.

We left home at about 10 o’clock on Saturday morning. Late for us, but sleep is sometimes a mistress who won’t be ignored. And I’m a sucker for a warm bed and sweet dreams.

Out along the A12, before Gladys realised where she was, and we headed out along the A127, past Cranham Caravans, and past Basildon which, as far as I can remember, is the best way to treat Basildon. She told us to turn left, and then do something at a roundabout, but there was no left turn. We carried on, until a major junction about half a mile further on, where she instructed us to turn round,

We turned round, came back down the A127, and she told us to take the exit, and turn right. Once again, there was no exit. We carried on, back towards London. A couple of miles allowed us to turn around, once again, and proceed the way we went originally. This time, thanks to a small tailback, we chugged along, watching carefully. Gladys announced it was time to turn off. There was nowhere to turn off. There was no road, no roundabout, no nuffink. We took the next exit, decided our own route, marvelled at how Gladys showed us a roundabout which clearly didn’t exist, and hadn’t existed for a good few years.

Gladys then settled down after her brief faux pas, and eventually arrived at the “Burnham Bends”. I didn’t know they were called the “Burnham Bends” until I saw it on the tee shirt of a motorcyclist at the village café. “I survived the Burnham Bends”, it said, with a cartoon picture of a motorbike, and a swirly line behind it. You can see them clearly on the Ordnance Survey map of the area (no. 168), as a series of 90 degree kinks in the road from Althorne into Burnham.

About an hour after setting off, we arrived in Burnham on Crouch. We’d been here before, to look at a static caravan. We didn’t buy it then, but I remember being quite impressed with the village atmosphere of … well, the village. And the pubs. And the fact that one of them had an “Adnams” sign outside. Burnham wasn’t too busy even at 11 o’clock on a Saturday morning, mainly because Burnham is the end of the line as far as the road goes. There are a number of shops, a small Tesco Express (of course – they’re everywhere), a surprising number of female therapy and beautification shops.

Gladys announced that we’d arrived, and indeed, in the gap between two houses, there was the “Silver Road Camp Site” sign. But the gap was very narrow, with a white metal gate across. This couldn’t be the entrance, so we stopped blocking the road, and drove around the block. There was no other entrance, so on the next circuit, we drove into the entrance, and stopped by the gate.

No sooner had we done that, than two people on cycles wanted to get past. They seemed to be in a hurry, but we couldn’t go anywhere, and I was trying to find someone to see who could let us in. Another camper appeared, told us to ring the bell, and did it himself, before noticing that the campsite lady was walking down the field, leading another motorhome. She didn’t have a red flag, but she looked as though she might.

Meanwhile, behind us, the two cyclists seemed to be getting frustrated. I told them I’d open the gate, and go inside so they could pass, but clearly this was going to take far too long, and the male cyclist pushed past on the passenger side of the van. The female member knew this was going to be a no-go as far as she was concerned, so decided to squeeze herself and her bike between the driver’s side of the van and a large, prickly thirn bush of some kind. By this time, the gates were open, and I was ready to drive through, except there was a middle-aged lady blocking my path back to the driver’s door. There was nothing I could do but wait until she’d scratched herself sufficiently, and I could drive through, thus creating a huge space through which cycles, motorhomes and Chieftain Tanks could drive through.

The lady returned, and we ‘settled up’ (£11.50 for one night), before she guided us down the well-made track into the depths of the site. She said that we’d sleep well, because people found the air “very soporific”. I think that’s the first time anyone on a campsite has used the word ‘soporific’.

We crept along the camp site track, and I parked where she told me to. She wasn’t being officious, but she was trying to find a flat area for the van. As it happened, the place we parked wasn’t level, but my expertise with the levelling ramps came to the fore again.

Hooked up, kettle on, and we decided what to do. We hadn’t had chance to get the paper, so we decided to walk into town. It’s a lovely village. Far too many health and beauty shops for my liking, but then they’re not for me. We got the newspaper and some humous from the Tesco Express, and Annie insisted that we stop at the Adnams pub. The things I do, eh? Two pints of Broadside later, and I was ready for a kip. But Annie had other ideas, and after lunch, we went on a stroll, trekking poles in hand.

Trekking poles – what’s that all about? They’re walking sticks, aren’t they? Ours are shock resistant, and all sorts of other stuff. A fiver each from Shepton Mallet. Mind you, they were good climbing down the riverbank on the Crouch on Saturday.

Anyway, we walked along the river bank, and we watched a dinghy race for a while. We spoke with a chap who was avidly watching ‘his boy’ in fourth place. It seemed like just too much hard work for us. We followed the path on the OS map, and walked back through a farm which was being very careful about the environmental impact of their farming, and planting borders specifically to encourage insects, birds and other wildlife.

They also had a CL on their site, which might be useful in the future.

Back to the campsite, and it was time to watch the football – England v. Macedonia. Out came the telly. Switch on. Got a strange menu. I’d never seen it before. How peculiar! Selected something different, and got AV and then the usual program search menu. Searched for channels, got a grand total of 3 TV channels, which had extremely poor reception. Loads of pixilation, frozen pictures, no audio. Tried a couple of time, waggled the aerial lead, but it was still poor. Almost gave up, as we had it on the radio anyway, when I remembered the funny menu. Managed to get it back, found BBC1, and it was obviously using the analog tuner. The picture was poor, full of grey snow all over the screen, but it was a picture, and we had the audio commentary as well.

And later on we had Strictly Come Dancing too, although I probably shouldn’t mention that!

The morning was chilly, but not unpleasantly so. The showers were worth probably 5 – a bit dated, although they worked OK. After breakfast, we walked back to the river, but turned west, looking at the harbour and marina. It’s a very pleasant area, and there’s some great riverside properties.

One riverside café had a small patio area, with around a dozen bistro tables. We treated ourselves to a cream tea – a little early in the day, but it was very much appreciated. We strolled back to the van, and decided to make an early start back.