Once upon a time, there was a bridge. Some say it was built by fairies.

“It lasted about four or five weeks before the National Trust took it down in a dawn raid,” says Ian Curtis. “The police were informed. But, of course, the fairies were watching and they put another one up. A better one this time, which is much harder to take down.”

The tale of Stiffkey bridge began in February 2022, when the Trust removed the original footbridge linking the village of Stiffkey to the magnificent salt marshes and sand dunes of the north Norfolk coast. This move, on grounds that the bridge had become unsafe, sparked a row between the villagers and the guardian of the nation’s heritage that has rumbled on for more than 18 months and has led to the creation of what, according to a scribbled sign, is The Stiffkey Fairy Bridge.

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Curtis grew up in Stiffkey and came to the marshes to play with his friends, sometimes watching the cocklewomen walk out to the sands to dig up Stiffkey Blues, the blue-shelled cockles (the thing for which Stiffkey was best known until the demise in 1937 of Harold Davidson, a defrocked vicar who had been the Rector of Stiffkey, then became a circus lion tamer and was mauled to death).

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The new fairy bridge was getting plenty of use last week from anglers, bird watchers and walkers, and although the mist was beginning to rise there was no sign of either fairies or the Screaming Cockler, the ghost of a cocklewoman said to have drowned.