I almost reached the coast in two big days; but family comes first, so I had a little bit left to do today before I could begin my personal tour of the English rail network to get back home. It was another cracking day of warm sunshine and I was in no hurry. I retraced my steps from last night (not least our trip to the pub in a nearby village) before ticking off another couple of pretty Suffolk chocolate box villages on the way to the small and agreeable town of Saxmundham.
Last time I was here was in 2022, on a day when I suffered a terminal collapse of my back rack a few miles away in Thorpeness. I somehow managed to limp along the road to Saxmundham station with a very temporary fix and improbably caught the train to London, got my rack fixed and still made it to Carmarthen in a South West Wales against all the odds and without having to buy a new Peak time train ticket out of London. I don’t recommend days like that; but these trying matters – very much like leaving my pannier on a train at Waterloo a few days ago – are there to test how well we respond in a difficult situation. On those two occasions, at least, I think I did rather well, all things considered.
Anyway, this time I was under no such pressure. I decided to make first for my true end point of Sizewell beach, which meant a ride along the road through Leiston and then on to the end of the road, right by the entrance to Sizewell B nuclear power station. It is a huge hulk of a building, with a massive white golf ball alongside, dominating the coast and visible from miles away either side. But somehow, over the sea wall and looking out across the shingle beach and big blue sea towards Souhwold (to the north) and Aldeburgh (to the south), it seemed almost incidental. One day – albeit too long from now – it won’t be there any more. However, in its place will be Sizewell C, whose construction is already being prepared for. There are large tracts of land nearby that are fenced off, and the diggers and huge earth moving trucks have already begun to move in. I was made to pause by a convoy of police motorcycles as they escorted in a massive yellow quarry truck today. More will follow. The roadsides are punctuated with signs protesting the construction, but it will be an unstoppable force, both politically and, when it is built, literally.
After a rather nice bacon bap, I decided I had enough time to visit my spiritual end point, if you will, of Dunwich, just up the coast. At the end of the 13th century this was one of the most important ports in Britain, and a Royal Borough with a population of 4,000 people and at least eight churches. It’s influence reached far; but before 1300 it’s decline had already begun with the silting up of its harbour entrance. That was compounded by massive storms over subsequent years, causing the rerouting of the River Dunwich and the loss of hundreds of homes. As Dunwich ceased to function as a port, it was slowly abandoned and its flood defences were not kept up.
But even as Dunwich began to disappear, it continued to elect two members of parliament until the 1832 Reform Act of Parliament did away with rotten boroughs. By then, much of the mediaeval town was lost to the waves. Today, only the walls of Greyfriars Friary, which dates back to 1290, are left as a reminder of Dunwich’s former grandeur. The last of its old churches, All Saints, was eaten away in pieces by the sea as the low cliffs collapsed in the early twentieth century. The existing village now has a permanent population of under 100 and offers visitors a fine beach, a pub and a small museum with a scale model of the town as it once was, marking the current shoreline around 2km from where it was in Roman times. They say you can still hear the church bells ringing under the waves at certain tides.
And with that mournful thought, it was time to cycle across the heather clad Dunwich Heath and back inland to catch the first of five trains that would take me home, briefly, before the spinner sent me away again at the start of September.