Norfolk

Yesterday vanished in a bit of a blur of no internet access for a large part of the day (at least, so slow that it wouldn't load anything) and a back gone completely silly. A week of bending over spinning wheels, and two weeks of less than perfect beds finally caught up with me. So now I am all dopey with the Ibuprofen, but sometimes it just has to be done......

Norfolk. MY country. Nothing but Norfolk blood on my mother's side, and I lived there for my formative years, returning regularly until six years ago when my parents left. The place I couldn't wait to leave, and that I still regard somewhere, deep down, as home.

This was only the second visit in those six years, and I still didn't feel like going to Cromer, though. I'm not quite sure why - my excuse was that it would have been far too busy with holidaymakers, but that is not all of it by a long chalk (hah!)

Things I had forgotten about Norfolk:
the incessant calling of the wood pigeons (fortunately, I love the sound)
the incessant roaring of the military aircraft doing wheelies over the sea (no, I could do without that)
the hard water that means your hair never feels clean even when freshly washed
the gently rolling countryside (no, Norfolk is not very flat, at least everywhere)
the fields of wheat and barley and beet
the lorries filled with some of same thundering through the byroads

(A brief pause from all this reminiscence whilst I discover that the "delete" key on this new keyboard does not appear to be working and that "Control+D" does not delete but saves to draft in Blogger.)

(And, coffee.)

The cottage turned out to be delightful - nicely situated next door to a country gastro-pub, where we ate twice, well furnished and comfortable (apart from the bed, although I think that was mostly me and not it.) A good village shop in the next village (which went up for sale the day that we were leaving, but the DSM did not respond well to my suggestion that we investigate the possibility.....)

The weather turned out nice again, as well. Some rain, but mainly sunshine tempered by hearty breezes. Good for trippering. Not that we did that more than gently:

the sea, several times





our two favourite potteries, Youngs and Made in Cley
the woad farm near Dereham

Baconsthorpe, which I thought I had been to before, but didn't recognize at all. A lovely place. It was grand to stand where the range of buildings had been that housed the spinning and weaving enterprise so many hundreds of years before.



(I'm trying to put a link in here, and failing - Blogger appears to have changed it's linking method, which has worked fine - I think! - for the first two links, but not this. Try Google!)

ETA: None of the links worked, so I removed them and will attempt to find out what went wrong and fix it. Or not! Sorry!

Other images:



Cley windmill



Chimneys near Holkham.



A detail from a national cycle path road sign.



Norfolk hollyhocks and brick and flint wall.



Whut?? Dead windscreens?? I couldn't resist them, they looked so ....quirky.

As usual, there wasn't time to do all that we wanted to do and have a good rest, but I think we arrived at a compromise. We are just going to have to go back sooner rather than later, eh? It was a grand few days, whatever.

And now? Well, a head bursting with ideas and projects and all sorts of plans; workshop booking for this year, next year and indeed the year after. Places to go and people to see. Feels good to me.