As Noel Coward wrote “Very Flat, Norfolk”. And it is. I did expect a lot more waterways though and it wasn’t quite the bucolic venetian landscape I was led to believe. The Broads are man made dug out peat surface mines which flooded and a few canals interconnect – although there is the spendid Denver Sluice which protects Cambridgeshire from flooding where various waterways, including the splendidly named Great Ouse, all interconnect and are redirected during high waters with a locking system to let boats through. Not quite the engineering triumph of the Neptune Staircase or Falkirk Wheel, but a pretty impressive and complex aquatic structure. They could do with a model to show how it all works.
We had left early to Grantham to see the place where Isaac Newton went to school (it must have been easier in his day without differential calculus and Newtons laws to learn) and Maggie Thatcher’s handbag graces the museum as this was her home town – the Hellmouth as Labour know it.
Our gateway to Norfolk was at Kings Lynn with a seafront view down the Ouse to the Wash. Along the coast we saw the Wash with a huge wind farm complex in the middle of it (over the 5 days circumnavigating the south east of England we saw lots of wind farms and at no point did we see one blade turning). Along the north coast we reached Cromer, famous for crabs, and walked along the lovely pier there to find people catching crabs off the pier.
I still had my Cromer Crab sandwich though setting me up for the drive to Norwich (home of Sale of the Century) and visiting Edith Cavell’s monument and grave at the cathedral. A nurse shot by the dastardly bosch which brought the americans into the first world war and through the law of unintended consequence caused the deaths of millions of Europeans through the introduction of Spanish Flu – only called Spanish because it was the Spanish who reported it in their newspapers first.
Crossing the Norfolk Broads to Great Yarmouth we were too late to visit the Louis Tussauds House of Wax, reputedly the worst wax museum in the world where no-one looks like they are supposed to (although I was never sure about waxworks in the first place). Great Yarmouth is the epitomy of what an English seaside resort has collapsed into. So we left there quickly to head aouthward into Suffolk and reach the seaside town of Dunwich , which has collapsed literally into the sea at the rate of a metre per year. You can work out how long the village pub has by marking your steps from the beach – this was a town with 12 churches now reduced to one the others languished at the bottom of the ever proceeding sea.
With darkness approaching we raced to Aldeburgh and settled into the White Lion Inn for dinner and rest although the sea view did mean I was awoken at 5am by sunrise and the sound of fishermen preparing for the day. Aldeburgh is most jolly place and we walked to the Martello tower where I stripped off and swam in a welcoming and surprisingly warm North Sea. We drove to the Cottage in the Sky which is a disguised water tank used by the lovely windmill beside it (water pumped by the windmill was stored in the tank for the village of Thropeness) and then to see the delights of Sizewell B nucelar power station with a caravan park outside its front gate.
We raced to catch the boat to Orford Ness – this is a WW2 armaments training ground and is a very eerie spot. You get to walk around on tracks marked with red gravel and with warning signs that if you step off it you may well get blown up as minesweepers have only cleared either side of hte track. The walk to the lighthouse takes in various testing areas and Laboratories and the pagodas used to test detonators for the atomic bombs sit silent in the mist over the shingle. Well worth a visit if only to see the failed Cobra Mist radio mast project.
It was going to be a race for the last boat before lunch between a large group and us – but we managed to elbow our way to the front and left for the Jolly Sailor for a splendid luncheon, leaving a couple abandoned for the after lunch return trip. Such a selfish act did mean that we made the Sutton Hoo exhibition (most of which is in the British Museum apart from the odd trinket they grant the exhibition), still it was nice to wander around the grounds. A fast drive down to see Southend-on-sea, rivalling Great Yarmouth for tackiest seaside resort, was impressed by the lengthy pier and then it was over the Queen Elizabeth Bridge (which was a big surprise as I had been expecting the Dartford Tunnel) and into a huge traffic tailback as the M2 was closed due to a large accident.
We struggled for hours through Kent traffic whilst Stuart back at base was organising accommodation with great difficulty – but it turned out that the Kings Arms Inn at Sandwich was full but knew a place in Ash that had had a wedding cancelled and sure enough we got into a fabulous b&b in one of Kent’s protected buildings with a four poster bed and a welcoming Tracey.
Filled with Ash curry we settled down to watch a drama about paedophiles and slumbered well after a day of travel and exercise.
