CAISTER-ON-SEA (for Ness Point) - APRIL 2023

This visit was part of our Six Points Tour - we ticked off Ness Point (furthest East) but took in some other places too, reliving Ian's childhood and seeing where some of Lois' ancestors lived.

We stayed in an AirBnB  cottage within yards of the seaside - we could even hear the sea from outside the front door.  That's important because the weather was awful and you'll see from the photographs of us at Ness Point and it was cold!  Unseasonably cold for mid-April!

The first thing we did was to visit Ness Point itself.  Last time Ian visited, the Point was marked by a graffiti-covered tin plaque pinned to the sea wall.  This time, it was marked by a very grand stone inlay to the pavement at the point.  Very good!

The ring around the edge shows directions to the other extreme points and these are shown on the composite below.  While we were there, we met another couple who were doing their own "Four-Points Tour" and had completed the Southerly ones.

 

This looks like graffiti, but isn't.   'A Lowestoft Man', is a piece of photographic art by award-winning Suffolk photographer Gillian Allard.  She first took a photo of Malcolm Wright - a Lowestoft man, born and bred and a former sea worker - at a bus stop in Pakefield in March 2020 and then adapted it to show a street plan of Lowestoft over the top

The art has now been showcased on a large circular outfall tower with an obliquely sliced top, wrapped with a steel pipe which extends beyond the tower with an end light - itself a piece of art.

 

Ness Point "in the bag" so to speak, we went to Ormesby St Margaret.   Lois' great grandfather, George Hubbard, came from here.  He was a farm worker here in the 17th Century.  We hoped that there would be evidence at the church, but if there was, we couldn't find it.  It's a very nice church, though, and really well kept.

 

On our final day, we "did" Great Yarmouth, driving the length of the sea front as Ian had done in his teens.  Very little had changed, except that the Hippodrome doesn't have a proper circus any more, just a show called Pirates Live which may well have been very good (Ian remembers seeing animals and trapeze artists there when he was about 10). Great to see that it's still there though.  The shows on the Piers are still there and Ian is sure that Jim Davidson and Bobby Davro were on when he was here last, some 40 years ago!  They still are.

We stopped for coffee near "The Venetian Waterways" which seemed a lot less attractive than their namesakes in Italy in the cold weather.  This pic is from the cafe, looking across the Waterways towards Yarmouth itself.

In the background are the Big Wheel and you can just about make out Britannia Pier on the left - that's the one with Jim Davidson and Bobby Davro appearing.

 

Back to Caister and a wander round the place saw these two lovely little cottages - the one on the left is "Thimble Cottage" which is almost literally squeezed in between two other houses.  Much of Caister seems to have built up like this - higgledy-piggledy is the right phrase, we think. The other pic shows "Widows Cottages", built using money donated by Thomas Clowes (Lord of the Manor from Caister Castle) in 1856 to provide homes for two poor widows of Caister.

Finally, a photo of a very contented hound who had found where the warm air blew!