Day 7 - Norwich Area - 14 September 2024

We started the day with a full English breakfast including black pudding.  That will keep us going the whole day, I am sure.  

A huge breakfast

Well, the pick of the halls around Norwich is Holkham Hall so that is where we headed.  There are no signs, and it took us probably 45 minutes to eventually find that the entrance. There, the gates were locked!

We thought that there must be another entrance so after driving for another 10 minutes, we found Blickling Deer Park and Hall.  What is that about?  Only then do we discover that the hall is not open on a Friday!!  We did not find any mention on the website.  What can you do but "flow" with circumstances. We stayed.

The deer were interesting, and we walked around the grounds. They are massive and the lake is huge.  

Does

Proud Stags

 

Then decided to have afternoon tea and that was the next interesting thing. No more scones and all the cakes are individually sealed which did not give us much confidence in their freshness.  We shared a sandwich.

As we left the place to walk to the beach, we noticed that people were preparing for a cricket game.  They marked the boundary with flags and had a score board set up. Spectators were arriving with chairs and picnic baskets one hour before the match started.  Cricket really is strong in England.

Holkham Hall

The gate to the hall

As we walked back to the car, we saw lots of mole hills.  They must be very small animals.

These are mole hills

Then we went across the road to the beach.  Originally, the area was a swamp but it was drained to allow grazing. Then, to stabilise the sand dunes, thousands of pines were planted.  It is a stunning beach.  

To get to the sand is probably more than one kilometre and then once you are on the beach, there is another kilometre to the water.  The "surf" was probably around one metre high.

Nonetheless, it was a great walk and was worth the effort.  the whole area is covered in sea lavender which is a very small plant about 120 mm high. It would look beautiful when it was all in flower.

Looking from the stairs

The whole beach

There is the water - still a long way to go

The beach is different from what I am used to even though the sand is soft fine silica.  There were hundreds of people with chairs and picnic baskets. No-one was swimming. 

It was a tiring day with a lot of exercise but wonderful to see the countryside. We headed back to the hotel