On Royal Wedding Day Sarah and I decided we would prefer not to be exposed to the nuptial media saturation, and so set off for a longish walk.
We left North Walsham Market Cross at 9-30 and strolled along footpaths and across fields and down little, quiet lanes for the greater part of the day, arriving in Cromer at about 5-30 that evening. The weather was glorious – bright sunshine without being hot enough to make you sweat and strain – and the countryside utterly ravishing, as a Dornford Yates character might have put it. We ate our picnic lunch early, sitting on the footpath (the Paston way at that point) just past some of our favourite cottages near Antingham, where we were overtaken by a party of really wholesome looking young people toting camping gear and arrived in South Repps in time for tea. We had forgotten – if we ever knew in fact – that South Repps Post Office is also a tea shop. We got splendid homemade scones, with butter, cream and jam. OK the jam was from ASDA but we ate it all. Unfortunately the tea was in bags, but then, as I have observed at length, it just about always is nowadays, and I drank a lot of it. One of the village streets had been awning-ed and long tables had been set out for the “street party” which was in progress. Everybody seemed to be having a good time. Some of them had champagne in tall flutes which looked very good.
The track between the Repps-es must be one of the loveliest paths in Norfolk, with scarcely a hint of the modern world to be glimpsed. Plus it rises and falls in a most beguilingly non-East Anglian way.
As far as nature is concerned, summer seems to be here. This year I have eaten the earlest Norfolk asparagus I have ever even heard of, and the first local strawberries already! The blossom is incredible. Roses are in bloom. I have never seen such profusions of dandelions, alkanet, daisies, eyebright and cowslips. Hoverflies are hovering in millions, with only a few swallows as yet to eat them. Haven’t heard a cuckoo yet, but the way things are, it can’t be long. We intend to go up to Brancaster, to a hedge famous for nightingales, before long!
In Cromer, before our statutory stagger along the pier, we ate in Mary Jane’s fish and chip restaurant. This has got to be the best such in Norfolk, and bears comparison with some of my favourites in London in the dim and distant (the place on Fortune Green, for example, run by and mostly for Jewish people, where all the batter was made from matzo meal, and you could get gefiltefisch and chips; the Sea Shell, in Lisson Grove; another place, whose name I am not sure I can remember accurately – was it Geale’s? - in Farm Street). Oh, many times yum! And four times long ago yum! Apologies to Callimachus.
Marking off our route on the ordnance sheet, we appear to have walked about 14 miles. Building up to the 20 I used to do regularly when I was in my thirties.
