Sue Coe, Dinner for Two, 2016. Courtesy the artist.

Signs and wonders

The Norfolk landscape is mostly flat and unforested, but it boasts the Norfolk Broads,” 120 square miles of shallow lakes, marshes and canals. Now designated a National Park, the Broads is in fact man-made, the result of centuries of peat harvesting followed by centuries of flooding. Threatened bird and other animal species are found there, along with pleasure boaters, commercial fisherman, light industry, farming and housing. I sometimes hike there, with my wife Harriet, but find the terrain monotonous and the pleasure boats intrusive.

The rest of Norfolk is given over to agriculture, forestry, and industry as well as houses and flats for about 900,000 people. I live in the county’s biggest city, Norwich, just to the west of Broads National Park. It’s a city with about 140,000 residents. That’s small enough that I’ll sometimes bump into people I know from one place in another on the same day. For example, last week I saw Little Mike – the 6’3” son of Big Mike the greengrocer – outside the Book Hive on London Street, just a few hours after I bought from him some courgettes (zucchinis), aubergines (eggplants), swede (rutabagas), and rocket (arugula). I’m still learning British names for common fruits and vegetables. People here really do say “toMAHto” to my “toMAYto” just like the song, but “poTAHto” is considered too posh.

Compared to the U.S., the U.K. is severely nature-deprived. There is no such thing as a truly wild place here, David Attenborough’s recent TV series (Wild Isles) notwithstanding. I doubt there’s an acre that hasn’t at some point been harvested, grazed, mined, built over or plowed under. But contradictorily, there are probably few places in the world with more trails and footpaths and a more established tradition of “rambling” (short walks in the countryside) and “trekking” (longer hikes). This is a roundabout way of saying that Harriet and I take a lot of walks in the countryside – compromised as it is – and sometimes see real wonders: English oaks with trunks as wide as cars, kestrels hovering above marshes, and 800-year-old village churches with crenelated round towers and graveyards edged with yew trees. Lately, we’ve made note of more unwelcome signs – farm animals that are both victims of human cruelty and instruments of the countryside’s decline.

An upsetting ramble

A few days ago, we walked a four-mile loop from the small village of Itteringham to Mannington Hall (a moated, medieval manor) and back. There was a light rain, bracing wind and lots of mud, but we were rewarded by a footpath with a plank bridge over a tributary of the River Bure, that led into a forest with oaks, hornbeams and crab-apple. Despite Harriet’s warning, I took a big bite out of a plump, yellow apple that had fallen to the ground – my lips and mouth puckered as if I’d sucked a dozen lemons. At one point in our ramble, we left some woods and saw on our left a recently harvested field upon which a few dozen rooks were congregated. These birds are members of the corvid family, along with crows, jackdaws, ravens, magpies and jays, and are extremely smart and gregarious. Hearing their hectoring “caw caw” was like listening to a family argument.

Sows and farrowing arks, North Norfolk, September 2025. Photo: The author.

A little later, we saw a field of perhaps 500 acres populated with large, female pigs, each with a little, igloo-like plastic or tin hut, called a “farrowing ark.” Sows like these bear three-to five litters before being slaughtered, age about three. (A feral pig or boar can live 10-20 years.) Piglets are taken away from their mothers as soon as they are weaned at about four weeks, and sent to enclosed, “finishing” facilities to be fattened. Unsurprisingly, research indicates that sows demonstrate high levels of anxiety and stereotypical behavior (pacing back and forth, incessant chewing, etc) when their babies are removed. The little pigs are killed at five or six months, usually by carbon-dioxide poisoning. Moments after exposure to the gas, they gasp for breath and begin to thrash. CO2 forms an acid that burns the animals’ eyes, nostrils, mouths and lungs. Escape is impossible and death comes in a few minutes. Say what you will, comparison with Nazi gas chambers is inescapable.

A little later, we passed a herd of about a dozen tagged and castrated bulls in a small, fenced meadow. There was lots of grass, and they looked happy enough, but it’s hard to know. Cows are prey animals, so they don’t loudly complain when they are hurt or frightened. These bulls were young – not more than about 8 months; they’ll be slaughtered in a year or so. You probably don’t want to read about how they are killed, but if you do, click here.

We walked on, greeted some Blackfaced sheep munching short grass in a small pasture fenced in barbed wire, and then crossed a large field of sugar-beets, a major crop here. We turned left and continued alongside a hedge, dense with brambles (blackberries), stinging nettles and little else. These are eutrophic plants; they thrive on very high nutrient levels, common in landscapes polluted by animal waste and animal fertilizer. Pig (shit) slurry is sprayed on fields in Norfolk in Spring and Autumn. It’s not advisable to hike near a field that has recently been sprayed.

Passing over a stile,........

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