Weavers’ Way Day 1 – Cromer to Aylsham

The day starts in Great Yarmouth where our waitress has been sea swimming with the seals, who now seem to be taking more herring than the kipper trade. Inspired by yesterday’s museum visit, Sid is not afraid and eats one of the smoked denizens. Doris helps out. Like several other foods (add your own list here) they might be eaten once every five years.

The minibus driver takes us to Cromer and we are trying to hear him through his Covid panel and over the radio – we think Boris features as a theme in all conversations. This is the week it is clear they were having parties in Downing Street in May 2020, soon after we were having a VE party in Regency Not Too Close*. So Sid and Doris cannot be too censorious.

Soon enough we arrive in and leave Cromer after the obligatory photo pose and a quick look from above at the pier which houses the Lifeboat station as well as the theatre. [And no need to descend all the way to the pier for pics, ha ha – D.]

Sid has looked for famous persons from Cromer. For the car dudes among you Sid’s pick (from a short list) is Malcolm Sayer who designed the C, D and E Type Jaguars as well as the fabulous-but-never-competed XJ13.

Off we go to a journey of often good but sometimes variable way marking, which did result in a slightly grumpy trip around three sides of a car park in the early stages.  But after that progress speeds up a bit, along mostly small roads, across fields and along some historic paths.

Many of the field paths were named lanes, never chosen for tarmac-ing. Many of them might have passed for lanes or roads at the time. Coming up one of these we find some very grand gates leading into an estate with a fine tree lined but unsaved approach avenue.

 The gate implies this lane used to be something more substantial though the house is now accessed from another angle using one of the lanes chosen for levelling up [? Levelling down? Levelling along? – D].

The grass in this road implies this tarmac’d road is rarely used, so the business case for tarmac-ing may have declined over the last hundred years – and we think that in the UK it is quite hard – although not impossible – to un-tarmac a road.

When the route goes across fields/footpaths it can be a bit boggy, and after some unpleasantly sucky boot-extracting moments the group “Walkers Against Slithery Paths” formed itself, (2 founder members), picking some alternative routes along some of those very little-used roads.

 Norfolk has 131 round churches (Suffolk 41 and Essex 7) so an eastern phenomenon though you will surely recall our find on Mull.

 Fine houses and churches were built on the profits from wool and cloth. In our first few miles we walked through fields of sheep. Now we see the houses, here the Jacobean (means in the time of James) Blickling Hall, briefly owned by the Boleyn family. In WW2 the RAF were billeted here and ran dinghy drills for downed crews on the lake.

The day is short here – sun rises and sets at 08:02-16:05 and we have not gone into the churches or houses as we accelerate, feeling the pressure of not wanting to be walking after dark. We arrive at hotel at 16:15 after 15.6 miles of walk in just over 6 hours and will definitely start earlier tomorrow.  If the Volataran Emulgel works…

PS Conveyance of the day is this Citroen H, not something that Malcom Sayer would have drawn but then there have been more of these at Le Mans than any of the Sayer mobiles.

 * The Regency Not Too Close VE Day Party might have been somewhat less glamorous and more determinedly socially distanced than the Downing Street versions.