Country diary: A rusting shipwreck that's part of the family | Nick Acheson

Blakeney Point, Norfolk: The old steamer, called Yankee, has long been abandoned on the shingle, dwindling in the elements. I take the four-mile walk to visitThere are thrushes on the wind today. A redwing has just landed in the veil of shrubby seablite between the tidal ooze of Blakeney Pit and the shingle where I'm standing. Exhausted by its crossing from Scandinavia, this handsome bird sits in a seablite's wind-torn tips and lets me watch. Mottle-chested, creamy-browed, it is exquisite.I have made the four-mile, shingle-crunching pilgrimage from Cley to near the end of Blakeney Point to visit my great-great-grandfather. To visit his memory, at least. He was Martin Fountain Page, co-owner of Page and Turner, last of the River Glaven shipping companies in 700 years of documented navigation here. Beneath the doormat in the north porch of Blakeney Church lies a slab of polished stone, engraved to his eternal memory, generous benefactor of the village as he was. Continue reading...