NORWICH IN ITS REGIONAL SETTING Il 
walls and flooded several square miles of country; and, even in the 
present century, cases of smuggling are not unknown, while the question 
of a hostile invasion of these coasts during the Great War was regarded asa 
serious possibility by the military authorities. To the geologist the coast 
presents subjects of exceptional interest, such as the solution of the 
baffling problem of the sequence of the glacial deposits revealed in its 
cliff sections, and the question of keeping accurate records of the rapid 
erosion which takes place when the waves and wind attack their soft and 
loose materials, the silting up of the river mouths, and the building up 
of the new shore lines where the land is gaining on the sea. 
A description of the ninety miles of coast line must necessarily be brief. 
Starting from Hunstanton: (1) The cliff of Hunstanton, which clearly 
shows a section of the older chalk, white at the top changing to red and 
resting on carstone, marks the termination of the chalk uplands. (2) To 
the north the land falls and the scenery changes from chalk cliffs to 
hummocks of blown sand extending from Hunstanton to Holme. 
(3) Holme to Weybourne—the characteristics are salt marshes fringed 
with rapidly changing sand dunes and crossed by meandering channels 
of the rivers Burn, Stiffkey and Glaven. The mud flats are carpeted with 
vegetation such as sea lavender, and intersected by a labyrinth of creeks 
and channels. ‘These creeks and channels devoid of water at low tide are 
filled rapidly as the tide rises, and as the lower parts are submerged patches 
of higher land are left as islands. In places, and more particularly in the 
eastern half, considerable areas of marshland have been protected by sea 
banks, and the land thus reclaimed utilised for grazing with some planta- 
tions of woods to add to the charm of the landscape. ‘Two other features 
of this section of the coast land must be noted: (a) a line of old cliffs is 
clearly traceable for many miles on the south side of the marsh, and (6) a 
number of old seaports which flourished from the sixteenth to eighteenth 
centuries, such as Burnham, Blakeney and Cley. All these harbours are 
rapidly silting up, but Wells still carries on a small import and export 
trade. (4) Weybourne to Mundesley—this stretch presents many striking 
contrasts ; high cliffs, wide beach of golden sand made accessible by 
fairly steep cart tracks, called ‘ gaps,’ cut in to the cliff face, absence of 
river creeks ; sea rapidly gaining ground at Trimingham and Mundesley. 
Old villages with some local offshore fishing, such as the crab fisheries 
of Cromer, are to be found at intervals along the coast. ‘These towns and 
villages have become the popular sea-side resorts of the Norfolk coast, 
and are rapidly becoming linked up with an almost unbroken line of 
bungalows, hotels and camp sites. A background of morainic hills with 
its woodland and hummocks gives this part of the coast its characteristic 
charm, one grass covered hummock, Beeston Hump, is to be seen quite 
close to the cliff near Sheringham, while the highest spot in the county, 
340 ft. above sea level, is within one and a half miles of the sea behind 
West Runton. The shore lines of this section exhibit some variation in 
details ; at Weybourne the water was deep enough to allow a battleship 
to approach close to the shore ; Sheringham has its well-rounded pebbles 
to protect its cliffs from the battering of the sea; Cromer is proud of its 
pier; Trimingham can boast of its high cliffs and its beacon towering 
