"Look at it this way"

New on iPlayer as of a few minutes ago is this 27 minute documentary on events at Hemsby on the Norfolk coast. Worth a watch. The residents of Hemsby don't want to leave, but their houses are on the edge of a cliff. This is their story of surving one of the most dramatic cases of UK coastal erosion.

  Radio 4's 'Costing the Earth' series broadcast a programme on the 18th of April called 'Losing our History'. It featured the Norfolk Coast and the village of Happisburgh.  There are over 400 episodes available. A recent issue of the programme explored the impact of erosion on historical remains. For more on this, visit the Pathways to Ancient Britain (PAB) virtual tour of the area around Happisburgh. There are some particularly important archaeological sites on the coast. This is developed using Google Earth.

There are a number of foods which have a protected geographical designation of origin status, such as Arbroath Smokies and Parma Ham. Icelandic Lamb has just gone through the process of achieving protected status. In March 2023, this message went up on the website: ‘Íslenskt lambakjöt' is the name given to the meat from pure bred Icelandic lambs, which have been born, raised and slaughtered on the island of Iceland. Sheep farming has a long and rich cultural tradition in Iceland. The characteristics of ‘Íslenskt lambakjöt' first and foremost consists of a high degree of tenderness and gamey taste, due to the fact that lambs roam freely in demarcated wild rangelands and grow in the wild, natural surroundings of Iceland, where they feed on grass and other plants. The long tradition of sheep farming passing down generations on the island has led to high standards of flock management and grazing methods.  One of the best examples of traditional Icelandic cooking is lamb meat soup.

  I've been interested in the practice of Mudlarking for some time, down on the Thames foreshore.  Tom Chivers, author of 'London Clay' was a speaker at the conference and read from his book and talked about his PhD that he is completing at Queen Mary University of London. There was plenty of interest here on these new geographies. He described a space which changes as the tide ebbs and flows, which is both private and public, safe and unsafe... he read from his book and current writing linked with his academic research into the practice, including the historical development of the practice. This is a landscape which is temporary and contested, and one which many visitors to London will never experience. If you attended the event you can see a recording of the session. You can also download a copy of Tom's slides. I own a copy of the Field guide to Larking which was written by Lara Maiklem. The session ended with Tom blowing a hawker's whistle that he had unearthed,