Showing posts with label Norfolk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Norfolk. Show all posts

Sunday, 8 May 2016

Day 8: Walsingham, Burnham Thorp, Hunstanton, Heacham, and Kings Lynn

A wonderful and surprising county is Norfolk. In the space of just two miles you find a car boot fair and an ancient unmarked house of great beauty.



Driving through villages called Pudding Norton and Little Snoring, and its brother Great Snoring - you couldn't make it up - I arrived at the pilgrimage site of Walsingham.


I am spiritual but not a 'church' goer so feared I would be visiting a religious theme park.
Walsingham village was quiet on Sunday morning at 10 am - everyone still in bed, at the car boot fair or in church.


Walsingham does have shrine shops and it does have lots of churches including Russian orthodox.




For people like me, the visitor centre was educational, with a well made video explanation.
The original holy house and church holy house was desecrated by our old friend Henry VIII who destroyed so many religious houses up and down the country.


The new buildings are very twentieth century, and very beautiful.

People come from all over the world on pilgrimage to visit. I was fortunate to come here on a Sunday as there were two sung services going on, and the scent of incense which greatly added to my experience. I was surprised how the energy of the shrine affected me.

 

Onwards towards Kings Lynn, through fields of rape, grain and some pink flowers that I can't place. There is considerable ploughing expertise in these parts too.





I don't know about England's green and pleasant land - I am astonished at just how much of our countryside in Sussex, Kent, Thanet, Essex. Suffolk and Norfolk are bright acid yellow. Are we now producing enough rape seed oil for the whole of Europe?



Burnham Thorp was s small quiet village whose claim to fame is that it is Admiral Horatio Nelsons birthplace. There were signs to his church and a glass studio, but no sign pointing to his place of birth, unless it was the Lord Nelson pub.

At Hunstanton I found Le Strange Old Barns antique, art and craft centre.


 Well worth a visit.

 


Gary was one of the five potters exhibiting when I paid a visit. They are in the process of redesigning their website.


The locals suggested I stop at Norfolk Lavender at Heacham as it was on route. Gloria, my car and I minced in behind a stream of vintage cars only to be told as a ford of 2004 she did not qualify!!


Not very impressed with the Lavender centre. The lavender fields are at Sandringham several miles away, and this turned out to be a kind of tourist trap with very little of any relevance to the growth or distilling of lavender. 


They had some kind of extraction machinery, but it was idle and no one was there to talk about it.


I had the meanest portion of ice cream for £2.20 that I have ever had.


Onwards to take photos of Castle Rising in honour of my daughter Morgan who makes a habit of visiting castles. Check out more on her blog with details of her castle challenge.






On to my my last stop today at Kings Lynn, a very nice historic town.


 


 


Then I left Norfolk behind and drove onto the wide flat landscape of England's larder - Lincolnshire.

Saturday, 7 May 2016

Day 7: Holkham, Burnham and Blakeney

My friend Ros came up to join me as this is her old stomping ground.


We started at English Heritage Castle Acre, founded by the Earls of Surrey the Warenne family.

 


Stunning ruins spanning seven centuries and wonderful old trees.




These villages are curiously similar to those in Sussex, such as Firle, with their Flint knapping. Looking at the ruins it appears that most of that was also originally built using Flint.

 


There are lots of ruined priory/church buildings in Norfolk, just standing in fields and churches with round towers and thatched roofs. Beautiful!

At the village of South Creake we had to do an emergency stop for a duck and her seven ducklings crossing the road.

Next stop Burnham Market for tea and cake and a simply amazing hat shop. Sandringham is nearby so I suspect it is frequented by Royalty and their friends several times a week!!

 




Holkham is the home of the Earl of Leicester and a thriving tourist venue. The family own and run the Victoria Inn where we had an excellent lunch just before a gas leak closed the kitchen.


Everyone's cake stand has a stag on top.


Waiters in jeans, white shirts and tweed waistcoats - and that's the girls.

The vast sandy beaches owned by Holkham are open to the public and one of the few places you can ride horses along the beach. So horse boxes were in abundance in the car park.


The sea was so far out it was invisible, just sand dunes and trees.... large trees, on the outskirts of the sand.



Finally to the Blakeney Hotel for tea overlooking the quay. 






It was decorated in 50 shades of grey so their PR person is missing a trick…