28th June 2005 - Norwich
So Morton goes to Peterborough first and then Norwich, but to save us time and to plan it so that we can get to Derby for Sunday’s ordination, we drove out to Norwich first and decided to work our way back inland.
The Boston to Norwich trip took longer than expected because of road works. They were using the classic ‘Go-Stop’ lollipop, so I said that if we ran over the signal-man on ‘Go’ we’d be the saviours of the day.
Today was the first day ever that we got really obvious looks of, well, I don’t know if they were of disgust or quizzical nature, but a group of five adults looked at us whilst we were lunching in Teso, Holbeach branch. It may have been Nav sitting in the camping chair enjoying his sandwich, but we both kind of made it look like Tesco carpark was our house, home and dining room.
‘Welcome to Norwich – A Fine City’ - That’s what was written on Norwich’s border sign. ‘A Fine City’?!? It couldn’t have been any lamer. It’s like saying: “Yeah, Norwich, it’s okay.”
We did the old trick of parking up a couple of hundred miles away from the city centre and walked in. Which I think was a good idea, as the streets we trod held many independent shops (mainly music, but there were others such as games, movies, clothes and accessories, etc.). It was great to see that sort of thing as I think it makes a city was it is (in fact, only a couple of days ago, BBC Radio 4 were discussing whether Exeter was a ‘clone city’ with all its name brand high-street shops). Some of the roads were still bricked and not redone with asphalt and that also made it more homely. It was a nice city to stroll around in with lots of ‘pedestrianised’ areas with even more small shops and some other name brands.
Before we got to the city, we found Stranger’s Hall (one of the places seen by Morton). Unfortunately, it was closed or at least they had finished all the touring sessions. The door to the small square of medieval houses was still open so we went inside to have a look. There wasn’t really much of interest, and it wasn’t until the end of the day when we were walking back to the car that I noticed they had cardboard cut-outs of people inside the houses – so you were supposed to peek through the glass when inside the square. The advertisements for looked crap anyway, so I don’t think we missed out on too much.
We found oldest Norwich Cathedral without a problem (there are two, and also a billion churches – Morton did say it was the City of Churches) and had a look inside. Impressively (or should have oppressively) huge and the Cloister (the cathedral’s inner green) was spacious also. There was one of those circular non-maze things (one entrance and only one method/path to the centre) shaped out by slabs of concrete placed into the ground. In the middle was a circular slab with “Golden Jubilee 2002” etched on it (I think that’s what it said, can’t really remember).
We strolled around quite some while before Nav said that he wanted to have a sleeveless t-shirt – and then he asked me if I had my Leatherman. I handed it to him and he pulled out the scissors and started to hack away at his sleeves. Somehow, at that very moment, there didn’t seem to be a single person around us.
What was pretty funny was that Nav successfully pulled off one sleeve and whilst tearing off the other, managed to rip his t-shirt down the side about half-way down. Oh, the hilarity! Mind, I think he got away with it because when he walked his arm covered the rip neatly. So Nav managed to make one of those sleeveless t-shirts in about 30-seconds, and well, it didn’t look too bad (nor good). He said that people would be jealous of his ‘frayed edge’ t-shirt, which was at some point ‘in fashion’. And I don’t think he got stared at either – Nav says he got a ‘respect’ look from some guy in the highstreet.
Further strolling around Norwich town brought us to The Forum. Boy oh boy – was this building impressive! The main construction was glass and steel (I think) with a flat front and a curve roof, looking very much like a modern aircraft hanger. It housed BBC Norwich, the local library, and also an interactive museum which dates 2000 years of Norwich history (so says the leaflet). It was huge and here’s a photo to prove it (and I think that Nav said it was too big for the camera too):
The TIC lady told us where to find the square Norman castle of Norwich and also Pulls Ferry. Before both, we strolled through the Castle Mall (Norwich’s shopping centre) just as most of the shops were closing so the place was pretty deserted – Nav did manage to get his Tax disc for the car, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.
It was coming up to 5:30pm and we found the castle to be closed. It was a real shame because the castle looked interesting. Maybe next time. From here we headed north-east, reaching the river and walking north to Pulls Ferry. We managed to walk past it because I had forgotten what the photograph looked like in Morton’s book. We turned around and took a photo of what we thought it could have been – turned out that we were right, although it looks nothing like it did then.
[morton’s shot of pulls ferry]
There were other places that Morton visited during his time in Norwich and Norfolk, but it was late in the day and some of those places too far. We decided that enough was enough and went to a campsite.
I think that this is another first: when speaking with the lady owner of the campsite , I dropped in the comment of us travelling around England. And for the first time, someone seemed remotely interested – it was great! The fact that she asked a couple of questions, like; how long have you been going for; where did you travel from today; and saying “Oh, lovely. Well, should travel around these places some time” was enough to warrant, in my opinion, some interest.
And it was also to be the first night of a thunder storm accompanied by a torrential downpour. A day of ‘firsts’, it seems. The tent was set during daylight hours and as the night drew in, we could see in the distance from the west, flashes of light brightening up the sky. At times there were several in succession and as the day grew later, Nav said that he could hear the rumblings of the thunder (but the whole thing was more than 30miles away at that time). However, in about 30-minutes, the distance between us and the storm had shortened considerably and was probably about 10 miles away – we hit the sack pretty quick at that point.
Oh and that campsite was full of little annoying biting flies and we got bitten to pieces – my head and neck, and Nav everywhere but the head. Very annoying. Whilst in the tent, we said that we’d die either from being eaten alive by flies or we’d drown in the flood of the storm. And then we heard the first drops of rain, lightly at first and then becoming slightly harder.
And it stayed ‘slightly harder’ for a very time, all the while we could see the flashes of lightning from the west followed by the thunder. And this went on and on, and then I got bored of waiting for the downpour and I fell asleep.
-- steven
The Boston to Norwich trip took longer than expected because of road works. They were using the classic ‘Go-Stop’ lollipop, so I said that if we ran over the signal-man on ‘Go’ we’d be the saviours of the day.
Today was the first day ever that we got really obvious looks of, well, I don’t know if they were of disgust or quizzical nature, but a group of five adults looked at us whilst we were lunching in Teso, Holbeach branch. It may have been Nav sitting in the camping chair enjoying his sandwich, but we both kind of made it look like Tesco carpark was our house, home and dining room.
‘Welcome to Norwich – A Fine City’ - That’s what was written on Norwich’s border sign. ‘A Fine City’?!? It couldn’t have been any lamer. It’s like saying: “Yeah, Norwich, it’s okay.”
We did the old trick of parking up a couple of hundred miles away from the city centre and walked in. Which I think was a good idea, as the streets we trod held many independent shops (mainly music, but there were others such as games, movies, clothes and accessories, etc.). It was great to see that sort of thing as I think it makes a city was it is (in fact, only a couple of days ago, BBC Radio 4 were discussing whether Exeter was a ‘clone city’ with all its name brand high-street shops). Some of the roads were still bricked and not redone with asphalt and that also made it more homely. It was a nice city to stroll around in with lots of ‘pedestrianised’ areas with even more small shops and some other name brands.
Before we got to the city, we found Stranger’s Hall (one of the places seen by Morton). Unfortunately, it was closed or at least they had finished all the touring sessions. The door to the small square of medieval houses was still open so we went inside to have a look. There wasn’t really much of interest, and it wasn’t until the end of the day when we were walking back to the car that I noticed they had cardboard cut-outs of people inside the houses – so you were supposed to peek through the glass when inside the square. The advertisements for looked crap anyway, so I don’t think we missed out on too much.
We found oldest Norwich Cathedral without a problem (there are two, and also a billion churches – Morton did say it was the City of Churches) and had a look inside. Impressively (or should have oppressively) huge and the Cloister (the cathedral’s inner green) was spacious also. There was one of those circular non-maze things (one entrance and only one method/path to the centre) shaped out by slabs of concrete placed into the ground. In the middle was a circular slab with “Golden Jubilee 2002” etched on it (I think that’s what it said, can’t really remember).
We strolled around quite some while before Nav said that he wanted to have a sleeveless t-shirt – and then he asked me if I had my Leatherman. I handed it to him and he pulled out the scissors and started to hack away at his sleeves. Somehow, at that very moment, there didn’t seem to be a single person around us.
What was pretty funny was that Nav successfully pulled off one sleeve and whilst tearing off the other, managed to rip his t-shirt down the side about half-way down. Oh, the hilarity! Mind, I think he got away with it because when he walked his arm covered the rip neatly. So Nav managed to make one of those sleeveless t-shirts in about 30-seconds, and well, it didn’t look too bad (nor good). He said that people would be jealous of his ‘frayed edge’ t-shirt, which was at some point ‘in fashion’. And I don’t think he got stared at either – Nav says he got a ‘respect’ look from some guy in the highstreet.
Further strolling around Norwich town brought us to The Forum. Boy oh boy – was this building impressive! The main construction was glass and steel (I think) with a flat front and a curve roof, looking very much like a modern aircraft hanger. It housed BBC Norwich, the local library, and also an interactive museum which dates 2000 years of Norwich history (so says the leaflet). It was huge and here’s a photo to prove it (and I think that Nav said it was too big for the camera too):
The TIC lady told us where to find the square Norman castle of Norwich and also Pulls Ferry. Before both, we strolled through the Castle Mall (Norwich’s shopping centre) just as most of the shops were closing so the place was pretty deserted – Nav did manage to get his Tax disc for the car, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.
It was coming up to 5:30pm and we found the castle to be closed. It was a real shame because the castle looked interesting. Maybe next time. From here we headed north-east, reaching the river and walking north to Pulls Ferry. We managed to walk past it because I had forgotten what the photograph looked like in Morton’s book. We turned around and took a photo of what we thought it could have been – turned out that we were right, although it looks nothing like it did then.
[morton’s shot of pulls ferry]
There were other places that Morton visited during his time in Norwich and Norfolk, but it was late in the day and some of those places too far. We decided that enough was enough and went to a campsite.
I think that this is another first: when speaking with the lady owner of the campsite , I dropped in the comment of us travelling around England. And for the first time, someone seemed remotely interested – it was great! The fact that she asked a couple of questions, like; how long have you been going for; where did you travel from today; and saying “Oh, lovely. Well, should travel around these places some time” was enough to warrant, in my opinion, some interest.
And it was also to be the first night of a thunder storm accompanied by a torrential downpour. A day of ‘firsts’, it seems. The tent was set during daylight hours and as the night drew in, we could see in the distance from the west, flashes of light brightening up the sky. At times there were several in succession and as the day grew later, Nav said that he could hear the rumblings of the thunder (but the whole thing was more than 30miles away at that time). However, in about 30-minutes, the distance between us and the storm had shortened considerably and was probably about 10 miles away – we hit the sack pretty quick at that point.
Oh and that campsite was full of little annoying biting flies and we got bitten to pieces – my head and neck, and Nav everywhere but the head. Very annoying. Whilst in the tent, we said that we’d die either from being eaten alive by flies or we’d drown in the flood of the storm. And then we heard the first drops of rain, lightly at first and then becoming slightly harder.
And it stayed ‘slightly harder’ for a very time, all the while we could see the flashes of lightning from the west followed by the thunder. And this went on and on, and then I got bored of waiting for the downpour and I fell asleep.
-- steven
posted by Steven | 6:46 pm
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