Today we should have been travelling to Paris, at the start of a three-week overland trip to Istanbul.

For obvious reasons, we're not doing that.

Instead we walked again to Overstrand and Sidestrand.

My father-in-law recalls camping somewhere near Overstrand, and seeing a hotel fall into the sea. He was only a youngster, so we're talking about the late 1940s.

We were intrigued by this story, and today we tried to track down some context.

It turns out it is extraordinarily difficult to piece the events together with any degree of accuracy.

A signboard in the village indicates the site of the former Overstrand Hotel, designed by Edward Boardman, and built in 1899. The description adds that the six-storey hotel was situated in the High Street, and had gardens and tennis courts that faced the sea. During the Second World War, the hotel was occupied by the military. It was gutted by fire in 1947. The High Street was closed back in 1937, and the road eventually collapsed into the sea.



This site shows the equivalent view, back in the days when people wore interesting cycling gear.


This site shows the hotel in situ (the note at the bottom, by Les Fisher, dates the fire as 1949, and this photo shows the burnt-out shell, which he says was "demolished" in 1951).

The account here gives a bit more detail (albeit without precise dates):

"After being de-requisitioned and restored at the end of WW2, the Overstrand Hotel was a massive building standing only yards from the cliff edge, it opened, then closed, then re-opened with a new bar called 'Bubbles Bar' to cater for the modern post-war holiday makers, who frankly never came.

"Around the late 1940's there were some very high tides which scored the unprotected cliff, creating a massive cliff fall. I went to see it on my way home from work and a chunk of land about the size of a football pitch had fallen into the sea. Left standing was a small bungalow and next to that the hotel. Shortly after, during the night, Bubbles Bar caught fire, which in turn spread into the hotel and although the fire brigade tried to save it, irreparable damage was done. The Hotel was demolished or fell into the sea after more cliff falls which eventually took the road behind the hotel and followed its foundations onto the beach."

(The curious thing here is that this account says it is an extract from two newspaper articles. But the one that refers to these events talks about the "Overstrand Court Hotel", which is an entirely different establishment.)

In 2018, the North Norfolk News reported: "The remnants of a magnificent former hotel in north Norfolk have finally been claimed by coastal erosion." This account corroborates the date of 1947 for the fire, and notes: "As crews battled to put out the blaze, the force of the jets tore the building apart." So it was May 2018 that saw the last of the foundations slipping down the cliff face, leaving pretty much what we see today.






So, though we can't be sure, it seems as though what my father-in-law saw was probably a bit of the hotel collapsing as a result of the firefighters' efforts to save it back in 1947.

But in this so-called information age, I remain gobsmacked by the difficulty of reconstructing events...

Anyway, having poked about here, we continued our "erosion" theme with a walk along the beach to Sidestrand. We had already visited the church, and we passed through the village again on our way back from Trimingham, but until today we hadn't walked that stretch of beach.

You have to be careful with the tides; you have to circumvent a large pile of sea defences; and you REALLY have to stay away from the bottom of the cliffs... But it's a fabulously photogenic walk.










The whole coast here is on the move... Clay slides relentlessly down from the fields, and builds itself into pseudo-rocks. The brickwork from former edifices languishes on the beach. A bit of a landslip (thankfully minor) got under way before our very eyes.





Back in Overstrand, we finally managed to photograph The Pleasaunce, a holiday home designed for Lord and Lady Battersea by Sir Edwin Lutyens in 1897 (yes, the Lutyens of Lutyens Delhi fame). Arthur Conan Doyle was apparently one of the numerous literary visitors.

Lutyens also designed Overstrand Hall (thus far unphotographable) and the village's Methodist Chapel:



At this point, I would be lying if I said I wouldn't prefer to be on my way to Istanbul, via Paris and a clutch of other interesting cities...

But our confinement here certainly proves that there's history, beauty, and interest absolutely everywhere.