Review Of 2011.

Even though it has been a very mild winter the grey overcast skies and shorter daylight hours have curtailed my filming expeditions much more than I would have liked.   But every cloud has a silver lining and winter is a great time to edit and catalogue the film that has been shot throughout the previous twelve months.

Reviewing the material is like fast rewinding the year - remembering the places I have been and the people I have met during this years filming.   Here is a selection from 2011.    Enjoy!   

                       Vintage ploughing and farm machinery - a shot from "The Marsh"
  

                                                   Gentle Giants at the same event.

 

                             Oxnead mill pool from  "Aylsham Navigation" 

 

 

                                How Hill at sunset from  "My Norfolk Year"

                                Shooting a sequence for  "The Station"

 Hunstanton, the only place in Norfolk where the sun sets on the sea.  Not in any film - I just liked the shot.

Anna Sewell's birth place in Gt Yarmouth and the house in Norwich where she died shortly after writing  "Black Beauty".     Anna Sewell is remembered in "Aylsham Navigation"

Hunstanton church where a  customs officer and a dragoon are buried, killed by smugglers.
 Featured in  "The Marsh"

Between shots of  Reed cutters on the Waveney,  from "The Marsh".

A Film Odyssey.

When I am not lugging camera equipment around the more remote parts of Norfolk and Suffolk I often ask myself why on earth am I spending so much of my time shooting a film which only a handful of people will  see.  Then, in my quieter moments I try to figure out  what drove me to start out on this film odyssey in the first place.

Somewhere in the sunlit uplands of my memory I recall my early years in a little village in west Norfolk.
One night in April 1942 the Luftwaffe destroyed our family home in Norwich just a few weeks before I was born.

                                      courtesy of wikimedia creative commons licence.

We were evacuated to the sanctuary of the rolling farmland of west Norfolk where a kindly old couple took us in.  The old couple became my adopted "Nanny and Grandpa Rawlings"  My newly acquired  grandparents were good old Norfolk stock.  "Grandpa" was a big man and as strong as an ox but had a gentle demeanor .  "Nanny" was a slightly built woman with an air of understated independence.  They did not have very much but were contented and quite happy to share what little they had.

I guess we didn't take up too much room as most of my parents possessions had been destroyed along with the greater part of the house.  This was just as well as the new home we shared with the Rawlings was a tiny terraced cottage with just two small bedrooms.   The front door of the cottage stepped down off the main street onto the stone floor of the parlour.  The parlour was small but uncluttered apart for a modest collection of  Edwardian china ornaments.  An enormous oil lamp occupied pride of place on a plain, unvarnished, wooden table.  Two wooden chairs with crocheted cushions faced an open fireplace.  On one side of the fireplace a huge soot encrusted  kettle was in perpetual steam.
The tiny scullery had stone floors with a coal or wood fired boiler in the corner.  Water was pumped into the cottage by means of a hand operated pump mounted beside a shallow stone sink.  This was quite a convenience compared to many families who had to carry buckets to and from the village pump.

                                           courtesy of wikimedia creative commons licence.

Behind the cottage was a long vegetable garden with row upon row of green produce.  At the end of the garden, surrounded by stinging nettles, was the thunder box  (WC).
Stone floors, Oil lamps, a wall oven and chamber pots were more than enough for all our daily needs.

Eventually Dad was able to rent a small cottage behind the village bakery and for the next few years we were awakened to the smell of fresh bread every morning. 

Some time after the war had ended we moved back to Norwich. The old house had been repaired with different coloured bricks to the originals.  Red rustics at the front and cheap War Damage "Flettons" at the back.  But we did have the luxury of running water at the turn of a tap, electric lights and flush a toilet, even if it was outside.
In our oddly coloured house I spent the remainder of my childhood.   Along with the other urchins from the neighbourhood I proudly shared ownership of the "bombed site" at the bottom of our garden.  The remains of the "bombed out" cottages provided an endless source of material to build dens and light fires.  

The two environments could not have been more different and as the old saying goes - "You can take the boy out of the country but you can't take the country out of the boy." 

In subsequent years we made regular visits to see "Nanny Rawlings" in the little cottage we had once called home.   We did not have a motor car so we travelled by steam train on the old M&GN line.

Passing  horse- drawn sail binders in the harvest fields and row upon row of wheat sheaves lining the golden stubble in perfect symmetry.
Standing guard over freshly sown acres were sad, lonely old scarecrows dressed in farm labourers "cast offs" and condemned to a  life of solitude.
Heavily laden trees lined the orchards while herds of cattle and flocks of sheep grazed contentedly in the meadows.  An endless stream of these rustic images drifted past the carriage window shrouded in wispy steam.   It was like travelling back in time but those images became indelibly etched in my memory.

                                        courtesy of wikipedia creative commons licence.

Sadly progress is a fearsome animal with a voracious appetite, it devours the years without regret or conscience.  Then one day we realise that the people and things we once knew and loved are gone, and sadly, we hardly notice their passing.  I suspect this is the reason  I embarked on this film odyssey.
 


To watch "My Norfolk Year" video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y_Ova5fHNE&feature=plcp

Coltishall to Buxton by Canoe

Coltishall, Norfolk, May 1st 2011.

I guess the people who need to know are well aware that the navigation for larger craft on the river Bure ends at Coltishall - or to be precise - Horstead Mill.   Beyond this point flows a tranquil stretch of river largely undiscovered - The Aylsham navigation.  It was used by trading wherries until the great flood of 1912 when many of the bridges and locks were washed away.  In order to retrace the route of the old wherries all the way to Aylsham we needed to get a camera along these upper reaches of the Bure.  I reluctantly agreed that the most suitable craft for this task would be a canoe.    I have never made a secret of the fact  that I am not a natural sailor, nor have I spent a lot of time on the water.  Since I started making this film recording the history of  the Norfolk and Suffolk waterways I have found myself in a number of different craft.    But a canoe!  I must be partly Red Indian or completely mad.    

Initially the plan was to fix two canoes side by side to create a stable camera platform (and to make the old chap with the camera feel a lot safer) - the idea was like the "curates egg" - good in parts.   Unfortunately this meant we would have to get two canoes and the camera equipment in and out of the water to negotiate the  locks along the navigation.  My advisors (son Andrew and his mate) came up with a revised plan, all three of us would go in one canoe. Being the lightest, I would be in the middle to balance the canoe.  I pointed out this would mean I would be filming the back of someones head instead of the river.   So the plan was revised for the second time, I would go in the  front seat with the camera and equipment and the two heavyweights would sit amidships and astern.     Once the seating arrangements had been finally agreed the canoe was launched and I was nominated to load first.   The canoe looked very narrow, the river looked very wide and the water looked very wet.   The little craft rocked violently as I took my place in the front seat and stowed the camera equipment.   My knuckles turned white from gripping the sides of the canoe when both oarsmen took their turn to clamber aboard.   This was my first trip in a canoe and I promised myself, if I survived, it would be the last.
A few minutes later we had shoved off the Horstead slipway and were paddling towards Aylsham on the first leg of our assignment.   Deep down I knew I would eventually have to release my grip on the sides of the canoe and start shooting some film.

The first part of the navigation meanders through a canopy of trees that overhang the river - quite surreal - it is not difficult to imagine a heavily laden wherry nosing its way along this part of the river.

By the time we got to Coltishall bridge I was beginning to enjoy the trip.  I must have crossed Coltishall road bridge hundreds of times but this was the first time I had ever passed under it.  Bathed in sunlight the bridge looked a picture with its gentle arch mirrored in the water.  The bridge was rebuilt in 1913 after the great flood had washed away the original.

Paddle blades broke the surface of the river with a gentle splash.  The water rippled softly along the length of the canoe as we passed through Largate and on toward Mayton Bridge.    The lush green scenery glided past our little craft, a clear blue sky left its shimmering reflection in the river.  Perfect peace!  In no time at all I had become a committed fan of the canoe.  My fingers had returned to their normal pink colour and the camera was recording some mesmerising shots of the river.

As straight as an arrow the "New Cut" stretched out ahead of us,  on either side the trees had given way to verdant green pastures.  In the open water of the "New Cut" a stiff breeze met us head on as we approached Mayton bridge.

  On the the far side of the bridge the breeze freshened to a fairly brisk "Northerly"  making the water quite choppy.   Our little canoe glided serenely over the ripples through "Buxton Long" reach and past the romantically named "Goose Turd Hill".  One can only imagine why the old wherrymen gave it this name.

The  "Great Eastern" railway bridge lay ahead of us.  This three span girder bridge over the river Bure was built in in 1878 and carried trains on the "Bure Valley" line until it was closed to passenger traffic in 1952   freight trains continued to use the line until 1982.    Since 1990 the bridge has been used by the narrow gauge trains of the "Bure valley" railway running daily services between Coltishall and Aylsham throughout the summer.

As soon as we had cleared the railway bridge Buxton mill was in sight.  The white painted building standing out against the trees that border the mill race.   The approach to the mill was very shallow, we tried to pick out the channel until a grating and crunching beneath us brought the canoe to a standstill.  I guess it was the combined weight of the three of us that eventually grounded our gallant little canoe.  Donning my rubber boots I abandoned ship and carried the camera and equipment to the bank while the two lads recovered the canoe.

Part one complete I am really looking forward to part two.  Buxton to Aylsham - by canoe.
To see an edited video go to. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiCMhQnsGuk