But where is Lingwood, how high is Strumpshaw Hill and where precisely is the record-breaking weather station? I was in the area yesterday so went to have a look.
Lingwood is a small Norfolk village about halfway between Norwich and Great Yarmouth. It's has an old nucleus, a quarter mile square of suburban roads and a lot of surrounding fields. My brother drove me down and we had to wait at the level crossing while a Greater Anglia train approached the station.
The village green is north of the railway, the village hall is south and the Post Office used to be north but shifted south to the Spar supermarket in 2018. This would have been a great place to hide from the heat last Friday because they have a Wall's ice cream chiller just inside the front door, also the shop's fully air-conditioned so none of the Dairy Milk bars melted. I doubt that the Lingwood Chippy across the road did a roaring trade that day.
The temperature record wasn't set in the village proper but on the southern edge of the parish, very nearly in neighbouring Strumpshaw. We parked there in the car park at The Shoulder of Mutton, sadly too early to enjoy the Ukulele & Pimms Evening at the village hall. From there we cut through the churchyard, where the tall medieval tower looks out of scale because the nave was lowered in a Victorian restoration, then on down Buckenham Road.
Strumpshaw Hill is barely a protuberance but high for Norfolk with a 45m peak. The penultimate telegraph tower in the chain from London to Great Yarmouth was once located at the summit, close to a ten sided windmill that was demolished in 1916. Later the southeastern flank of the hill was excavated for gravel and then used until 1988 as a council tip, the waste in some places up to 20 metres deep. They've de-gassed and rewilded it since.
It's an extremely gentle ascent but you can't see much from the very top due to a surfeit of trees. However step out onto the rewilded tip and the open slope is now covered with a glorious sheen of heathland and wild flowers. All the vents poking up out of the subsoil must be doing their job because you're now free to wander, maybe even sit on a bench where dustcarts once dumped smelly refuse. Best avoid the prickly southern path overlooking the recycling centre if you're wearing shorts, my brother advises.
I have never seen so many butterflies in one place as I saw here, almost all of them peacocks, fluttering up in great numbers from the grasses, brambles and weaving paths. I'm not sure if this is normal or related to the heat or because early July is when the majority of chrysalises emerge. Strumpshaw Fen is renowned as the sole home of the UK's largest butterfly, the swallowtail, but that's a mile to the south and I've only ever seen two of them there, not literally hundreds.
The crossroads at the far corner of the tip is the highest point in the Norfolk Broads. Specifically you want the field of maize in the southeast corner, this the closest the National Park boundary gets to the top of Strumpshaw Hill. It's only 40m above sea level but there is an excellent view across the Yare valley including a distant windmill, the Cantley sugar beet refinery and the twin masts at Stoke Holy Cross. Every other UK National Park is considerably higher, the Cairngorms over 30 times so.
A short distance down Wood Lane is the entrance to Buckenham Wood, a stripe of ancient woodland purchased from a private owner just three years ago. The paths weave up and down due to gravel extraction and apparently the bluebell display is excellent, but that's long past. Instead a kaleidoscope of butterflies rose up into the air, the multitude again seemingly all peacocks, while a few continued to sun themselves on a nearby bench.
The reason for coming to Buckenham Woods was that the Met Office's incredibly accurate list of weather station locations states that Lingwood is at 52.61045°N, 1.48483°E, fractionally north of the treeline. It was here on Friday that they reckon hot air blowing from the west was perfectly cancelled out by a sea breeze creating calm conditions that allowed the temperature to soar. But we stood on the edge of an arable field and looked but could see no measuring equipment anywhere, only ripening wheat and distant hedgerows.
The only likely spot was Sunny Cottage, an isolated homestead by the wood's northern exit. The driveway exits into Strumpshaw parish whereas the cottage and its garden are very marginally in Lingwood. I would show you a photo of the rustic frontage but the owner was in his front garden talking to two visitors so snapping a shot would have been gauche.
Instead we followed the public footpath up the side of the back garden, which was entirely concealed behind a tall hedge until a brief gap at the far end near the owner's shed. And there at the bottom of the garden was a white louvred box - the Stevenson screen - at the appropriate height beside a row of runner beans. It was here that the record-breaking temperature of 37.7°C was set, a maximum so high that until 2003 it would have been the UK's highest ever temperature, not just for June. Mission accomplished.
We had suspicions that the visitors to the cottage were journalists and later they proved to be a team from ITV interviewing stationkeeper Ernest Hoyos. He's been recording the weather here and sending off his data every morning for over half a century - he says without a single day's break. The Met Office sent someone to check his Vaisala equipment on Monday, confirming all was working as it should, and a little further scrutiny should see the provisional record ratified as a national June maximum. The resulting three minute report is wonderful, including a charming interview and drone shots so you can see what Ernest's garden and surrounding environment look like from the air.
BBC Radio Norfolk came too but without a camera. I can't match them for quality but I hope I've brought you a flavour of the wider area which, last Friday, outsweated every other June day ever.
