Christmas 2007 is now over and yes, despite all my fears, it was a good Christmas. We spent time with family and friends, no one argued, the turkey was delicious and the cat wasn't sick! What more could I ask for?

Well........, it sounds terribly indulgent I know, but actually I could do with a quiet and peaceful holiday away from everyone. Long walks, bracing sea air, not too much to eat and somewhere cosy where I can curl up and read all those wonderful books I was given for Christmas.

Despite sometimes alluded to as The Esplanade or The Parade, the main path that runs, with its continuations, for some 2 miles at the very edge of Aldeburgh's beach is modestly called Crag Path. Dame Millicent Fawcett, the campaigner for women's suffrage born in Aldeburgh in 1847, says it was not always called that. In her autobiographical 'What I Remember' she wrote, "I remember walking along the crag path at Aldeburgh - we always resisted with vehemence any Cockney attempt to call it The Esplanade, The Parade, or any such name."

Perhaps one of the greatest musical festivals in the world; the inspiration for The Aldeburgh Festival came in August 1947 when Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears, Eric Crozier and a group of around forty British artists - the English Opera Group - were travelling across Europe performing Benjamin Britten’s operas Albert Herring and The Rape of Lucretia to packed audiences in Belgium, Luxembourg, France and Switzerland.

A delightful five mile walk over heaths, through woods, and beside farmland with magnificent views over the Alde Estuary between the village of Snape and the coastal town of Aldeburgh.

Until a few hundred years ago the village of Snape was far larger than Aldeburgh, perhaps the reason for the well trodden path which runs between the two. Called The Sailors Path it gave seaman access to Aldeburgh, then a centre for both local and offshore fishing, boat building and of course a certain amount of smuggling.

In 1846 Ipswich and Bury St Edmunds were linked to London by the new railways. The East Suffolk line now runs from Ipswich to Lowestoft, with a number of direct trains from Liverpool Street, London, each day. The first section of the line was opened in 1854 joining Halesworth to Beccles; five years later it was extended to Woodbridge, from where Eastern Counties Railway trains travelled to Ipswich and then to London.

There is some indefinable otherness about Aldebugh; perhaps it is the contrast between the middle class gentility of the town and the elemental power of the sea as it grasps and throws back the sand and shingle which make up the long, sometimes steeply shelving beach, or maybe it is the fantastic Suffolk skies, the clouds skudding across an azure sky, the deserted marshes peppered with the skeletons of long abandoned boats.

It is often said that Suffolk's landscape has changed little over the past century but what of its towns and villages. Taking a Tourists Guide to Suffolk as our reference and with the help of postcards of the period we will try to take you back in time to Aldeburgh at the end of the Victorian era.

J M W Turner (1775-1851)

Perhaps one of the most famous English landscape artists was J.M.W.Turner, born in London he attended the Royal Academy School of Art at the age of 15.

Within the year his work had been accepted for the Summer Exhibition. His early work consisted of drawings and watercolours on paper. Turner was twenty-one before he exhibited his first oil painting at the Royal Academy - Fishermen at Sea - in 1796.

Aldeburgh
The upmarket seaside town of Aldeburgh - which grew on the site of an old medieval fishing and ship building centre - appeals to a wide cross section of people - from families, writers, artists and music aficionados to city folk in need of a quick, cultured getaway and that invigorating salty North Sea breeze.

Ultimately, if you thrive on good old-fashioned English seaside charm and unspoilt natural beauty then this is the place to come to with not a flashing neon light in sight and many a delightful pastime to partake in.