Every child should have had one time in its life when he or she can lay on their backs and watch the clouds roll overhead seeing the shapes that are in the clouds and watching them change from a car to a house in front of their eyes.
As they become adults the playful shapes of the clouds are replaced by the more tangibles shapes.
Amongst the vast expanse of Norfolk's skies things stand out
with a striking effect when projected from what can only be
called "a flat and bleak horizon". These interruptions
to the featureless landscape make everyday objects take on forms
that the eye does not perceive in other environments.
Windmills; masts and more prolifically than anything else, church
spires take on a new form and prominence that would be lost
amongst the high rises of a city or the peaks of a mountain range.
Windmills are
found all over the world and undertake several tasks including
the grinding of flower, acting as drainage pumps and most
recently providing a clean form of electrical energy. The
Windmills of Norfolk have with or without sails penetrated the
Norfolk skyline for hundreds of years with a shape that is
synonymous with the county. No true Briton would mistake which
county a photograph of a windmill punctuating a wide flat skyline
comes from. As they become obsolete from each of these rolls they
have gone into varying states of disrepair. Some are still cared
for by groups such as "The National Trust". New wind
farms are just a continuation of what has been seen on the
Norfolk horizon for hundreds of years. Each mill regardless of
its use has it own character.
Along the rivers of Norfolk the juggernaut was the wherry. This
environmental and silent form of transport has been on the
decline since the beginning of last century. The few remaining
wherrys with names like Olive and Albion stand out on the Norfolk
skyline, the masts dwarfing the aluminium sticks of modern
dinghys and overshadow its little brother the broads Half-Deckers.
The massive wooden masts and there associated burgees can be seen for miles attracting people who become bemused and transfixed by the timeless and distinctive shapes that protrudes above the horizon. It only job now is to transports there minds back to the days of Regattas and races that were so popular in the 1920's and are now only seen in the sepia images of old photographs.
Norwich Cathedral is a magnificent Norman building set in the
largest close in England. The nave roof bosses, illustrating the
Bible from Creation to the Day of Judgement, and the Saxon
Bishop's throne in the eastern apse, are unique features. The
cathedral spire is the second tallest in England, and the
cloisters are one of the largest monastic cloisters in England.
The Cathedral was begun in 1096, the vision of Herbert de
Losinga, first bishop of 
Norwich.
Building work on the Cathedral, a bishop's palace and the
associated Benedictine monastery continued throughout his life,
but the Cathedral was not finally consecrated until 1278.
There are over 700 medieval churches in Norfolk
beckoning the eye with great windows and high clerestories. The
ear is beckoned with bells housed in towers that dot the Norfolk
skyline like commas with Norwich Cathedral being the exclamation
mark of the page that is the Norfolk sky.
The stone and flint of the ruins are all that remains of the
main gateway to St Benets Abbey, once a great monastery founded
by King Canute 80 years before Norwich Cathedral. 
The Abbey stood about 200 yards from the gatehouse,
where the ground rises above flood level. The site was known as
the Island of Cowholm, and here once towered a building over half
the size of Norwich Cathedral, dominating the marshland.
The coastline of Norfolk is an unending ribbon of yellow sand that stretches from the wash to Hopton, this being the border with Suffolk; it is plagued with the problem of erosion that over the years has been fought by various methods that have also left features on the horizon. Between Cley and Winterton an impressive bank has been built. In the area of Cley this is shingle and presents an conspicuous gray wall to the North Sea. As you come South this is replaced by Dunes of fine yellow sand held together by Marrram Grass.
This bank is re-enforced by a series of groynes that stick out
into the sea and stops migration of sand by costal tides around
the coast.
At Sea Palling offshore granite blocks have been
placed to catch sand that wants to migrate out to sea, this seams
to have been very successful but all these systems appear to help
in one area to the detriment of another.
