There were around two hundred Seals squabbling, sleeping, stretching and scratching on the beach at Horsey. They howled like wolves and stank of bitumen, fish oil and fox. I loved the smell. The air was so pungent you could taste its earthy saltiness and it hung around on our clothes when we left. We watched from the bank, kept at a safe distance by a line of blue rope. A couple of Seal pups had hauled themselves up the steep slope and lounged nervously just beyond the boundary line. They had obviously had enough of the sea’s battering and chose to face the terror of humans with dogs instead.

It was bitterly cold, wild and beautiful throughout our winter break in Norfolk. We had to do an emergency shop to buy our Collie a smart thermal-lined coat which was, acording to the label, a Danish design.

When the sea is stormy around the North Norfolk coast, the cliffs fall and ancient treasures are revealed. I am an avid fossil and flint tool hunter and know there will be good stuff to find when this happens, but there is tragedy too. A lifeless Porpoise and some Seals were tossed back and forth along the sandy shoreline by the drag and push of the waves. One was only a few months old. There was another barely alive pup on the boat slipway that had managed to drag itself out of the carnage. The Seal rescue team had been contacted. I so hope they saved it.

I don’t feel the cold when I’m searching and let it catch up with me later. The cliff had freshly collapsed in places where the sea had raged and that’s where I search, but it is dangerous and could fall again at any moment. Running away, across deep piled-up pebbles, from a landslide would be fraught and probably impossible, but I love that element too. The beach is lonely and the rawness of the savage sea blows all the nonsense away and I forget everything but my lust for a piece of fossil bone or flint, fashioned by one of the hominins who pre-dated the Neanderthals.

I did find some good stuff. A Lower Palaeolithic struck flake in the distinctive and most beautiful black glossy patina that comes from the Cromer Forest Bed. This would have been knapped by my hero, homo heidelbergensis, over half a million years ago.

I also found a lovely fragment of fossilised bone, possibly deer, also part of a sea urchin which was beautifully detailed. Another of my favourite finds was a pristine and complete Belemnite fossil that would have been alive 70 to 100 million years ago. They are the bullet-shaped inner shell guard of an extinct squid-like creature and can be found locally in the Brickhills too, but these are never as stunning as the one I gathered from West Runton. It was fresh from the chalk layer which was formed when the dinosaurs roamed. To find one with its hollow part still intact is very rare, but best of all was the surface pattern that looked like minute roses from flocked wallpaper. Oh how I wish I were still out there searching on the beach for more fossil bounty.

Julie Cuthbert
January 2026