Aldeburgh

Aldeburgh is my most visited coastal town and the closest I can get to being metropolitan. 

I love the art-deco cinema and the bookshop, and I have bought fish and chips and eaten them on the beach on more than one occasion.  Over the years it has hosted poetry festivals which I have immersed in, I have feasted in its galleries and workshops and occasionally in its restaurants. It gives me the chance to be ‘other’ for a while.

It tends to be quieter over the winter, when I like it the best.  There seems to be more room to think, while watching the skies and the seagulls picking their way along the seafront.  If you go in spring, the smell of new paint or hammering often greets you as new shops open, cafés are spruced up or holiday homes revamped.

In summer it’s fun to join the visitors parading along the seafront and to mingle among the crowds in the boutique shops. I like to eat ice-cream sitting on the seafront wall, which separates the walkway from the pebbled beach, which hosts kite-flyers and fisher-people with their intent, taut poles, and become a holidaymaker.

But it all seemed too risky this year.  Where once no-one would have worried much about keeping two metres apart, bundling into cafés or amusement parks, or sharing space with strangers, it now matters.  What will become of what we once knew, no-one really knows.

I visited it again last week, mid-week, hoping it would be empty.  Just wanted to say hello to an old friend, and smell the sea, even if fleetingly.

I managed to park above the town and walk down to the high street. It is quite a drop into the town. In times to come perhaps the sea will lap where the high street now is.  Old Aldeburgh extended further out. In Tudor times it was a port, but the silting of the Alde estuary and coastal erosion made it inoperable and a lot smaller.  The Moot Hall, where the town council still meets, dated 1650, is a survivor of these times.  It now sits close to the beach, near where the weather-boarded fishermen’s huts face the sea.

The broad high street is Georgian I think, but the houses and shops along it vary in size and age, forming a slightly erratic composite.  The huge buildings that rear up just behind the sea front, come from the Victorian era, when sea air became fashionable.  Even then, there is a mixture of styles. A tiny little pink cottage, one-up, one-down is protected by a car parking area, and dwarfed by its neighbours, who stare out to sea through bay window eyes.

I try for a look at the sea every time I go.  This time I managed a dash to the front, after buying a lentil, apricot and nut pastry for later, at the local bakers – from behind a Perspex screen paying by card.  If I have time, I like to sit on some benches that were once part of a covered area.  The roof has been recently removed, but you can still enjoy the sea on one side and the chink of moored yachts on the other, separated by a roadway that goes to the yacht clubs on the estuary side.  Different weather seems to operate.  I have sat and watched black clouds and high waves beating the pebbles on one side, and bright blue sky on the other.

The rain was beating down on me too much to sit there, so I turned left and walked briskly along the front past the quaint watchtowers and the Japanese style RNLI boathouse, before turning back into the town.  I noted the cinema was open and showing again.  I’m not sure I’m brave enough yet for cinema-going– I suppose I’ll wait till I feel drawn to it.  Wearing a face-covering should not detract from the experience.  

From there it was a short walk to the town steps, which I prefer to go up not down, as my balance isn’t utterly reliable, and the stone steps can be slippery.  At the top, a covered bench is built into wall. I take a picnic there sometimes and watch the boats in the distance crossing or coming down or up the shipping lanes, the sea-turbines, the waves, the rooftops below and the sky.

When I got back into the car I was soaked from my lower legs to my feet, but my raincoat had kept me dry.  It is a raincoat I bought in Aldeburgh.