New York to California: A journey across the East of England looking for the not quite visible

by Jeremy Page

Novelist, traveller, scriptwriter, photographer: Jeremy Page is a man with a broad view of wide horizons. But on approaching middle age, he experienced a calling to return to the place which he - and his ancestors - had called home. Like the migratory eel, retracing a route back to somewhere it had once fought to leave, he decided to take a long, slow journey through a landscape both familiar but also separated by time and distance from his current life. Starting in the tiny Lincolnshire fen-village of New York, Page sets off with an eccentric companion and a dog, following a similar path to his forebears - through fenland, along coastlines, into cities and across broads. His destination: another village with an improbable stateside name - California - on the East Norfolk coast. Whilst never entirely clear what he is searching for, he hopes answers might emerge amongst the not-quite-visible-parts of the landscape and its people. With great humour and beautiful observation, he paints a poignant, joyous portrait of what it means to stop and contemplate who we are, where we came from, and where we might be heading. Concrete answers are not what he he finds, but glimmers of the nearly-hidden provide tantalising clues that both he and his readers will benefit from having experienced long after the journey ends.

Genres: Nonfiction, Travel

277 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2019

Reviews

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 4 out of 5]

The fens has felt stark and mysterious – and crossing them had given me a feeling of having encountered the ghost-life of my family, all of whom had left that particular landscape now. The North Norfolk coast, in contrast, had felt rich with my own memories, and had been filled with the luminous quality of light and a beguiling sense of soft erosion. The trip south through the Broads had felt meditative, as though I was entering the hart of an East Anglian landscape that beat its own rhythm. Then Norwich, a trickier presence, layered with conflicting experiences and not something I could easily decode.

Effectively a literary memoir/travel book in the form of a journey of only a few days – by bike, foot and boat – from Lincolnshire’s New York to Norfolk’s California and split into three main sections: a cycle trek through the Fens – where the author’s relatives once lived and where his Mum nearly returned for a teaching job; a walk along the North Norfolk Coast – from West to East – ending at Cromer, - with West Runton being where the author spent much of his childhood; a gentle kayak along the Broads (where the author as an older teenager and young adult owned a small boat) – broken by a visit to Norwich – particularly its market and Museum.

As with most books of this type I always find them more interesting when exploring areas I already know well - increasingly as I have got older I have realised the importance of a sense of place, belonging and roots (I now have a house around 100 metres from where my Grandfather was born) particularly when doing a job which involves working with teams across multiple continents (and which - other than COVID - involves working in the "other" New York once a month).

And this passage for me summed up both my childhood and my life at 50+ with my family’s favourite pub and one I first found via the same crossroads albeit on the hand scrawled map of the matriarch of the local landed gentry rather than any Soviet spy.

At primary school the US Air-Force F-111 and .. A-10 .. roared over the playground tearing the sky apart with their jet-shrieks several times a day, endlessly practicing wargames. The airfields of Lakenheath .. Mildenhall .. were bristling with planes, and the presence of all this hardware was clearly making us a target foe the snub-nosed Soviet SS20s … The joke went that if you were ever lost in Norfolk, phone the Kremlin as they knew the country backwards, and would be able to direct you if you were say, at the Matslake crossroads trying to get to the Saracen’s Head.

[Dorothy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been reading 2 books in tandem, one about an 85 year old woman walking the streets of New York in her mink coat, and this one, about the author undertaking a walk through East Anglia, between the towns of New York and California, both towns on Britain's east coast. They could not be more different. Jeremy Page writes with humour and with nostalgia for places he knew as a boy. The book is also full of interesting facts about men and women who once lived in this part of East Anglia, and also about strange creatures who have washed up on its shores. It is quite possible to see in the mind's eye the places he writes about and to imagine the sea, the rivers and the drainage channels that form the landscape. I have never been to this part of Britain, and in some ways, I think I would not feel at home there, living as I do surrounded by snow-capped mountains and forests of cedar and fir. Nevertheless, I do feel I know more about it now that I have read this book.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had a school friend, her father in what was then the Nature Conservancy, who used to holiday annually on Scolt Head in Norfolk. Other than that, or perhaps as well as that, Norfolk may as well have had "Here be very flat dragons" written across my mental map of it for much of my life. And yet my parents met there. The way I am talking about East Anglia perhaps explains exactly why I loved this book, even before revealing that my relationship with the county in the last couple of decades owes much to the author's influence. From him came (second hand) guidance about places to go when I finally did resolve to satisfy some curiosity, from him came a novel set there, which I loved whilst it also confirmed my difficult relationship with the Fens.

There are plenty of books about journeys, especially the pootling about Britain sort and I am not sure I've ever met one of those I really didn't like. If someone told me I could never read any other sort of book I don't think I'd be heartbroken. Sometimes I like the comfort of samey. This was not samey, whilst never shouting "I'm not like the others". The journey was short, in distance and in duration, but deep. Impressionistic rather than forensic (although his companion Heath is a handy chap with the facts and figures, as well as supplier of The Dog, an additional delight) The central conceit, a journey, by, as it turns out, most forms of transport, between New York (Lincolnshire) and California (just north of Great Yarmouth) never weighs down the narrative. It makes complete sense without seeming unduly lofty of purpose. On this, Page hangs a memoir of his life, and his family's lives, much here but also his world travels (stopping just short of the place namedropping point where I might mutter "Well bully for you")

Initially I thought I would be ranting at this point about the poor production of the photos (some recent, some from the family archive. They reminded me of those unforgivably awful reproductions in quite a number of books travelling around Britain from an architect's or planner's perspective. And yet I came to feel, as I peered, that, intentionally or otherwise, that's exactly the point: the not quite visible. And his experience as being as much about absence - what didn't happen, what isn't there - is one that resonated very powerfully with me.

There are banal and there are dramatic events (if you should have an allergy to tales of beached cetaceans this is not the book for you). I'll not easily get his neutrally told but to me heartbreaking account of regular hotel weekends with his father and brother out of my head. As someone who loves to pore over OS maps, I had already been tempted to take a look at California last Summer, the holiday chalets memorably but subtly awful. And as soon as I had finished the book I was away to the excellent Geograph site to look at New York. Page walked and bicycled and paddled in his own footsteps and could inspire others to follow.

[Mitch Karunaratne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a journey across the East Anglia landscape - by cycle, walking and canoe. It's not a mammoth, macho travel story of hardship, blisters and battling extremes - instead it's a reflection on landscape, who we are, where we come from, what sparks our imagination. I love this landscape and know it well. It was a joy to spend time deep in this historic waterscape - absorbing the tales, eccentricities and rhythm of the land.

[Kinga · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this account of Jeremy Page's journey across East Anglia, fron New York in Lincolnshire to California in Norfolk. What made the book wonderful, was not the accurate and engaging descriptions of the walk and the countryside, but the author's stories of his travels and his childhood and his family. This is a great read for all those who love travel, but also for those who like where they are. Jeremy Page's writing style is soothing and warm and I was sad to have finished this book.

[Rosamund · Rating 3 out of 5]

I couldn't help wondering whether [the roadsign] THINK, DON'T SINK! might also be a mental health warning, that thinking your way out of this landscape might be the only way to escape it.

The author journeys across southern Lincolnshire, the very northern tip of Cambridgeshire, and along coastal Norfolk. I picked this up hoping to get an alternative perspective on the Fens — which my family moved to when I was 10 and which I hated from the start — and then the very eastern coastal part of Norfolk which is where my grandmother's family came from.

Since I left Norfolk, I've found it very difficult to describe to people what exactly it's like where I come from. Since I moved abroad, when I say I come from the English countryside, I'm sure people are imagining rolling hills and quaint thatched cottages. But there is none of that in Norfolk, at least not in the places that are in my personal frame of reference. Typical responses like "Ooh, I went to Norwich once" or "The Broads are meant to be lovely" feel like they are about a foreign place. As the author says, something about it is not quite English. The book does succeed in capturing some of that intangible, bleak weirdness.

Although I grew up in the western rim of Norfolk, with a train line that takes you to London and beyond, thank god, most of it is geographically and infrastructurally isolated from the rest of the country. And this is something you take with you, even when you left long ago.

I'm glad I picked this book off my shelf when I did, as North Norfolk is fresh in my mind. Recently my mum and I drove up to Cley-next-the-Sea and a couple of other places mentioned in the book. It was a very grey day, the inescapable gloominess I've come to associate with Norfolk. Hard for me to romanticise. It's not that Cley and the surrounding area is a nasty place, exactly. It just feels so cut-off and I think I would have been even more depressed there. We agreed we were glad we hadn't moved there.

Something I do find utterly hilarious is that the author journeys between a certain village and a bigger town. My hometown is wedged right between them, and not a single mention is made of it, not even to grab a sandwich for the road at Tesco. Like, was it that unremarkable? Haha.

There are descriptions of gruesome deaths here, including of animals, so watch out.

[C J · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a marvellous book. Perceptive, wry and funny, it is the product of what is obviously a very original mind. The narrator uses the device of a west-to-east trip across East Anglia (often along the coast) to explore the relationship to place and to the past – personal, historical, geological - in a way I have never seen before. That exploration is so sharply focussed that at times the landscape feels like a metaphor for his own personal history and personality, and vice versa, as though the incidental details of his journey, and the emotional resonance they provide, were an inner voyage too. We get a sense of himself travelling deeper and deeper into his own personal and emotional depths as he unearths or happens upon the historical, the local, and the quirky-specific in the landscape he is crossing. Until we reach the point where we no longer know which is the more liminal zone – the ever-shifting land/sea border or the East Anglian coast and marshes, whose saltland is the site of a never-ending struggle between growth, preservation and extinction – or the narrator’s mind itself. Engaging, insightful, entertaining, and above all deeply original.

(By the way, the book itself is a beautifully crafted object too: a map of the journey printed inside the French flaps, and the text full of the author’s own enigmatic photos.)

[Jacquie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a work of narrative non fiction, about a journey by cycle boat and on foot. But nothing is as it seems, for a start both of the places in the title are in East Anglia and the journey is as much through time as through space. These are the places he grew up, so he is reminded about the things that happened there or sometimes of imagined versions, or snippets of history, gossip, or salty regional dialect. So it has a layered effect, and of course, as reader you add your own layer. For professional reasons I spend a lot of my days listening to and reading the stories of East Anglia folk, so it is the landscape of my imagination too.

[Laura Barnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was selected for me by the Book Hive 'LUCKY DIP' in Norwich. The only criteria for the mystery book that appeared on my doorstep, after paying £10, was that one of the bookkeepers had read it and loved it.

This book is indulgent, thoughtful and full of the quiet subtleties East Anglia has to offer. Would recommend to anyone, especially those with a connection to the 'continent'.

[Robert Newell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. A fun and eccentric adventure through the fens and the North Norfolk Coast. The imagery is fantastic throughout and I like the amusing recollections and observations.

[Paragon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Norfolkian Odyssey

[Taff Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

A gentle pleasant amble (and paddle) across East Anglia emphasising that we are all islands, ourselves.

[Sasha · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the way the author had woven past and present together, and the richness of the imagery. Overall it gave me the feeling of looking at the sea on an overcast day. Just want to add for any other readers with PTSD that there is a cursory line about rape that our narrator overhears from a stranger that to be honest was really jarring. Other than that I liked reading this, I found it quietly absorbing. Interesting to read a book where largely the main character is in complete/near complete solitude, especially given recent events. A little repetitive at times as well. But if I was looking for a portrait of a person to slowly be revealed to me in this sort of way then I have to say I preferred reading The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa.