Suffolk Punch horses - one of the county s pride and joys
- Credit: iWitness/Richard Brunton
From incredible landscapes to historic delights galore, these are just eight of the things that put the county proudly on the map.
Benacre Beach
- Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto
Beaches
When someone asks what makes you think of Suffolk, chances are one of the first things that springs to mind are the gorgeous, endless miles of coastline.
From Felixstowe in the south, through to Aldeburgh and Southwold, right the way up to Lowestoft, there are a number beautiful seaside towns that see hundreds of thousands of people flock here en masse every year.
Black Shuck is said to roam the Norfolk coastline.
- Credit: Archant Library/Sam Robbins
You may have seen Amelia Opie, Norwich’s pioneering anti-slavery heroine – she looks down on us all from the rooftops on the street named after her in the city. But Weird Norfolk wonders if was she also seen by another of Norfolk’s famous names – Black Shuck - when she took a seaside break just outside Cromer in 1829…
Black Shuck haunts Norfolk folklore, a dark figure “as big as a calf and as noiseless as death” stalking through the county since the 16th century. Seen across the county, and in Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Essex, Black Shuck takes many forms and has many purposes, a true manifestation of everyone’s fear, a creature you definitely do not want to see on a dark and stormy night.
Stewart Lee (photo: Idil Sukan)
“When I was six,” Stewart Lee remembers, “I was given a copy of
Mysterious Britain by Janet and Colin Bord.” It’s a book about the ancient sites of Britain. “My gran brought me up and whenever we’d be going somewhere, I’d ask to stop because we were near the Rollright Stones or somewhere. And she’d say, ‘Oh, Stewart, you and your old ruins.’ People of her generation weren’t interested. They were trying to escape the past.”
Lee went to school with members of Napalm Death. Their grindcore music is as harsh and difficult as they are personally polite, charming and vegetarian. “I used to go orienteering with Napalm Death,” Lee recalls. “Now you can get ‘Orienteering with Napalm Death’ T-shirts.”
Gina Long
Joseph Ballard is brining back Norwich Fringe
- Credit: Contributed
Joseph Ballard is a theatre producer, performer, and playwright based in Norwich. His career spans theatre shows and establishing charitable organisations and festivals, to teaching and working with the production team at the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. During the pandemic, Joseph has led online creative and wellbeing programmes and he has relaunched Norwich Fringe, which will take place online from March 18-21.
What’s the impact of Covid-19 and how are you adapting?
As someone working in the theatre industry, nearly all our work disappeared overnight, shortly followed by postponements which eventually became cancellations.