It’s easy to lose your bearings among the vast horizons of Haddiscoe Island. This triangular grazing marsh on the borders of Norfolk and Suffolk, enclosed by the rivers Waveney and Yare, feels far bigger than its 2,000 acres, and more remote than its position just off the A413 to Great Yarmouth should allow.

Reeds across the horizon in Haddiscoe. Photograph: Tom Allan

In this stark, late March landscape of mudflats and drainage dykes a small figure is cutting water reed. Wally Mason, wearing rigger boots and homemade gaiters fashioned from plastic sacks and baler twine, is the last person to cut thatching reed by hand in Norfolk. He reckons he might be the last in Britain too. “The work’s too hard for most people,” he explains, offering up a clay-caked palm as proof. Most reed-cutters, including his sons, now use ride-on machines, but 72-year-old Wally has used a hook since the age of five and won’t change now.

The reed towers a foot above him as he gathers a fistful of stems in one hand, and draws a razor-sharp hook through them with the other. It is a smooth, unhurried action honed by many thousands of repetitions, but a lifetime of this work has left agonising splits along his fingers. After a dozen or so swipes the reed is tied into a bundle, stomped and stacked ready to sell directly from the bank.

Mason cuts between 30 and 40 of these bundles a day, working from December until the “colts”, new reed shoots, appear in April. For thatching, the stems must be from a single season’s growth and as uniform as possible. Local thatcher Nick Walker, here to inspect this year’s crop, believes the winds on Haddiscoe produce stronger, more durable stems. For Mason, however, the cutting easterlies are a constant foe, though there are joys to be found in the marshes, too. He has short-eared owls and marsh harriers for company, and loves watching grebes while he works: “Can’t they dive and swim!”

Wally Mason, 72, still cuts thatching reed by hand. Photograph: Tom Allan

Purple clouds are moving silently towards us over the marshes. “Best get on,” says Mason, blowing on his hands, “the cold’s getting into me now.” He returns to his cutting, and as I head off the island, car heater on full, the hail comes down like pellets.