Log No 349. Wed 18th Jun 2014 - Hemsby to Sea Palling, 9 miles (5349 miles walked)

My sleep was disturbed last, I was woken at 2 am by the noise of my empty food tins clattering. As I usually do, I had set my empty tins in the porch, the lids were in the bottom of the tins and something was making them rattle. Could this be a rat I wondered?

Even though it was dark there was enough light for me to see through the mesh on the inner tent door and see the shape of a tin moving.

I made a noise to scare it off but it had no effect so I rumaged through my rucsac to find my torch. When I switched it on I saw it was a hedgehog and of the 2 tins that were in the porch only 1 was there.

I got my camera and pointed it what I hoped was the right direction, I couldn't see anything in the viewfinder, and took a couple of pictures. The hedgehog had gone before I had taken the second one.

This was the first time I have noticed anything, apart from slugs, trying to get at my rubbish in the porch. I moved the tin into the inner tent so I hopefully wouldn't be disturbed again. I found the rice pudding tin in the morning about 1m away from the tent.

A couple of weeks or so ago I was seeing notices saying that hedgehogs are having a hard time and to report any sightings, well there is definitely one in Norfolk.

My starts are getting later and it was 10.30 before I was away this morning. There had been some light showers but it was dry as I made my way along the footpath through the dunes.

These dunes were well established with the marram grass giving way to the more normal rough grassland.

At Winterton the dunes were now more of a heathland nature with heather and the odd small tree.

This was a good footpath, still a bit sandy, and I followed it all the way to the campsite past Horsey.

The footpath stopped here and I went over the dunes onto the beach.

The tide was up and further ahead of me I could see the waves almost up at the defensive sea wall. I wasn't able to climb the wall so rather than risk being caught out by the tide I went back inland at the next access point.

There was no footpath but I followed a track between the field and the dunes and all was going well until I came across a wide ditch that I couldn't cross. I had to backtrack quite a way before I could find a way through the bramble briars to get back into the dunes to find a small path going in the right direction.

At the first opportunity I got onto the road and followed it for the final mile and a half to Sea Palling.

It was 14.10 when I got to the campsite here at Keith Farm where I had been offered a free pitch.

A mere 9 miles and pleasant walking through the dunes, the threatened rain never came and it was good walking weather.