The view from Incleborough Hill

If I look West from Incleborough Hill on a clear day I can see the shingle beach at Cley. If I look East, I can see Cromer church and lighthouse. Now that’s not exactly an earth shattering panorama, but in North Norfolk it’s a pretty good one as they go. And all the more for being unexpected.

Sometimes there’s a container vessel steaming silently past. More often a crab boat searching out the local delicacy. The offshore wind farm sits quietly on the horizon line. Other times it hides behind an invisibility cloak. Once recently, it stood out against a pink evening sky as an almost Gormley-esque art installation.

What you can be sure of is that each day the view is different. It might be the golfers on West Runton links that attract your gaze. Or the horses at the sanctuary across Station Road. When you tire of boats, a train will roll past to offer some variety.

Last summer I ran up the hill just to watch the Red Arrows putting on a display you felt you could reach out and touch. The regular daily aerial diet of helicopters merit barely a glance on their commute out to the gas rigs. Raise your bins and you can see the distant platforms and as the sun goes down, their lights and flares make them easy to pick out.

There used to be ponies on the hill to keep the undergrowth in check. Stroll across in the evening and you’re likely to surprise a deer. Sit quietly and you can watch over the fields. The beef herd munching the rich pasture. Rooks returning to roost. And as the sun drops, a keen eye might spot a fox breaking out of the woods to the South.

Owned by the National Trust and swathed in gorse, this piece of glacial moraine overlooking Sheringham, Beeston, West Runton, East Runton and Cromer is a well kept secret, more likely to be known to the Caravan and Camping Club members who make a summer home on the adjacent site than it is to the visitors to the nearby beach or the Gold Coast.

But if the flowers left by one of the benches each spring are anything to go by, it’s a place that has touched lives over the years.