Back in Walberswick

 

Well, two days into a short camping break in Walberswick and already I feel its effects. I have written earlier about it being my favourite place in the world, and looking into an old diary from several years ago I find that I indeed thought so then. And this is not to knock all the other wonderful places I have seen and not yet seen, or that you have seen or not yet seen. 

For each of you I think there will be some equivalent (and it might even be your own house). These I think are the essential requirements of the place, in the way it makes you feel. 

• It should not be elaborate, nor expensive because there should be an uncluttered feel to your enjoyment of it. A simple though satisfying flavour, not duck a l'orange.
• It should noticeably make your pulse rate come down as you arrive, and if you forget your email password after a week or so there, that is also a good sign.
• The matter of 'clock time' should not be of great import there. If you know it is 'early in the day' that is quite accurate enough.
• (I think this is obligatory) There should be a very clear feel of the natural world around you but it could for example be a city as long as the stars and the sunsets were good, or even spectacular. Bombay beach comes to mind.
• The people there should make you feel happy, either by their interaction with you or by their complete equanimity to your presence or absence. In either case, you feel no hostility or antsiness caused by others.

I have a long history with Walberswick, which I think doesn't harm, but you may fall in love with a place at first sight and be just as linked as I am with here. It is thirty years since I first camped here and we had stayed in a house before that. There are now grandchildren of the youngish adults I first knew here, and the grandchildren have their own tents. This is also an appeal of the place because you feel that something literally timeless is being passed on. The shingle bank will indeed one day be breached, but I can see humans (or human-ish) looking at the sunrise here in ten thousand years and saying, in the patois of the time "I'm feeling its time for a sit -down. And this looks like the right place"

Thanks again, old friend on this earth.