erastes

I had a lovely morning! I drove out to Caister to get some shopping (that bit wasn't lovely) and on the way back I decided to go to Horsey, to have a look at the place. I would have liked to have done in the winter to look, because that’s when Mere Mortals was set, but when I first started it it was set in Dartmoor.

Photos ahoy! (not mine)

It was a really fascinating experience actually. I tried to look at the landscape through my character’s eyes. Crispin gets a coach from Yarmouth to Horsey, and it’s not a short hop, either. It took me a good 15 minutes to do it by car, so it must have taken several hours, especially in the dead of winter in 1847. Once one got past the more manufactured landscapes – the hawthorn hedges, and the decorative trees in the villages, I suddenly came upon exactly the landscape I imagined Crispin would have seen. It was a weird sensation, like suddenly jumping back in time – the road was lined with pollarded willows and the landscape is marshy, flat and useless for much else other than sheep. Stretching right out to the coast on the right side, and to the Broads on the other.

As he’s passing through this countryside, he’s entirely unimpressed. It’s all brown, he remarks, which it would be in November, with dead reeds and dead trees, dead grasses.

As you approach Horsey Mere, you can’t miss the windpump which is huge and set right on the road, so Crispin needs to mention that more empathically.

Horsey Windpump—probably very much the way that Crispin saw it.

I didn’t stop at Horsey Mere itself, as the small car park was filled with tourists “ey up, our Mabel, did you pack t’crisps?” but I’d like to go back in the winter, perhaps get a day boat and have a better look. Too late perhaps for inspiration, but I’d like to follow the rest of Crispin’s journey, even if Bittern’s Reach (a house on an island in the middle of Horsey Mere) doesn’t actually exist.