1936 On the Continent

said he’d come out gathering worms; he gathered me in. That was Cley. And I still think it’sa charming place—so it must be. Testimony could not be more convincing.
    Further on, there’s a bird sanctuary—a small island fitted with a house for visitors, and for a small charge they’ll take you out and let you spend the night there and watch the birds coming in, migrations from the north—thousands and thousands of them. The air is thick with wings.
    Now you may come back a little way on a glorious road, high on a hillside above the shores of The Wash, wild, sandy land, and round Royal Sandringham (take care you don’t run over pheasants—because they’re so many, and so tame, they’ll roost in the car, soon as not).
Hear! The Music of Croyland Bells
    I want you to spend the night at C ROYLAND (no, it is nothing to do with crows—it’s from “cru,” marshland). You may go there and learn all about Guthlac and Tatwin, his boatman; and there, in the middle of the high street, you will see what I always think is the oldest thing in England,
it conveys the sense of time
more than anything else, dates are only figures. There, in Croyland main street, stands an old pointed three-legged bridge, so steep that the pack-horses who used it must have been beaten and dug in their hoofs to clamber the hard rock of its building. It is small and cramped: the stones that built it had to be carried so far that each one is precious. There are usually children playing on the steps, or old men leaning against the buttresses: and underneath, where the dry roadway goes, the stones are water-worn—water-worn deeply away. But the old bridge will never feel the water again, nor the silky rushes stroking the rough stone. The water has drained away.
    The Bells of Croyland are sweet-voiced bells, and very old. They change their tone with the turn of the tide; for when the sea fills The Wash the bells resound over the water.
    Ships at sea can hear them many miles out when the wind sets from the land. Canute rowed with his boatmen round this coast. The old verses say (translated):—
    Merrily sang the monks of Ely,
    When Canute, the king, rowed by.
    “Row nearer the land, row closer in,
    And let us hear those monkes sing.”
Dutchmen in England
    If you have time to go further north into Lincoln, then leave E LY for your return journey, but you must certainly go there. A less well-known place is Wisbech. I cannot tell you why it is so fascinating, but everyone I have sent to Wisbech has loved the strange Dutch town, with the water winding through the main street. So let it depend on the season. Go there in spring if the bulbs are out, and the fields checkered with flaming colour, or later, for the strawberries that are grown in that district.
    This part of the world is called “Holland,” and at the present time a number of Hollanders are working there making huge rafts, which they float out to sea for reclaiming land.
    Sutton Bridge is where King John lost all his crown jewels in The Wash (and never smiled again).
High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire
    Presently you will see Boston Stump, which is the church tower of B OSTON . In the days of high tides and broken dykes and the sudden floods which even now threaten Lincolnshire, they used to ring the church bells for a warning before great seas: and they rang them upwards from the lowest note to the high. Read Jean Ingelow’s
High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire
, for it gives a wonderful picture of one of those inundations. I think you will understand that strange country better when you have read that poem. (Kipling makes one of his heroines hum that tune—d’you know her?) And read Dorothy Sayers’
Nine Tailors
also for a splendid description.
    Boston should have particular interest to all Americans, because of the Pilgrim Fathers.
Lincoln Sheep should interest Australians
    Australians would be more interested in the great raw-boned Lincoln sheep, somewhat akin to the Romney Marsh sheep of Kent, and we believe, one of our indigenous breeds. (There are strange notes in historic MSS. of monk farmers and penitent landowners smuggling home-breeding rams in the time of the Crusades. They landed at Hull, they say—it’s just one of those tag-ends of historicinformation that are so tantalising.) When you visit Lincoln you will pass Dunston Pillar, this was once a lighthouse for travellers (1751).
    Now if you are travelling through the east only it is time to turn back to