The tide waits for no man

Ancient waterways, massive skies, and a new company charting old maps. Nick Hammond sails Norfolk’s fabled coastline using the timeless power of wind and tide

- Nick Hammond

THE sky is banded in bold strata of many hues. Beneath a blood-orange sunrise, the otherworldly madness of a curlew cry is all I have for company as my little boat slips silently into the mirrored estuary. The tide —visible via the urgent riffles that swell and spin past—is reaching its spring zenith, a barely credible 13ft, all told. I’m sliding gently across the saltwater, up only one inlet of the myriad forgotten creeks surrounding Norfolk’s fabled and crustacean-laden, saltmarsh-ringed coastline.

A boat without an engine, sailing on the timeless power of wind and tide, is an ancient thrill and a silent one. Today’s crew —skipper Henry Chamberlain, Royal Marine comrades Ian Finch and Charlie Hodson, science writer Zoe Dunford and surfer and designer Colin Herbert Powell—is chipper, delighted to be out here at 5.30 am on a chill and mesmeric morn after promised 40mph winds faded away with the blackness of night. I’ve left the comfort of 18th-century Barn Drift, with its insulated warmth and sneak peek of white-horse waves through the pines, for a day on the saltmarsh and mudflats with the Coastal Exploration Company (CEC).

It’s a recently founded Norfolk company with vintage values. With three unique and refurbished antique wooden fishing boats— today’s is a 1950s crabber—the company leads mystery tours, family excursions, smuggling adventures, and more in and around Wells-next-the-Sea.