Tim & Denise Tiner Travels: 2024 England - April - Norfolk Trip - Day 04 - Norfolk Blickling Estate and Cromer Beach

April 10th, 2024

I slept pretty good last night. The world should know that. The room is small, the covers on the bed short and the room could get cold at times. But all good. The bathroom here was built into a closet making it very small also. But all in all, the room in our flat is very comfortable. I think the others rooms are similar.

I woke up this morning, showered and went for a walk. The skies were blue unlike the rainy day we had yesterday. The walk was awesome as I toured the neighborhood. It’s an average, commoners living area. We have a pub right across the street and some eateries just down the road. Nonetheless, Dave Thackeray purchased all the trimmings for a big hot breakfast. Unfortunately, it took 20 minutes to figure out how to make the two stove tops work. But, we eventually did and as a result had sausages, bacon (ham slices), scrambled eggs, crumpets, strawberries, pineapple along with milk and OJ. It was yummy.

At 10 AM we set out for the National Trust site called Blickling Estate. Oh my….this site was quite impressive. 120+ rooms in it. I think it was originally built as a Tudor style home but later in the Jacoby period a brick face was put over the Tudor style look. Nonetheless, the house and gardens were really impressive chuck full of lots of art and things of the period. It was the first estate taken over by the National Trust and it was where Anne Bolyen was born. She still had her head here!!!

After spending a good amount of time here, we headed for Cromer Beach. I had heard Cromer had lots of crabs to eat. Unfortunately I was very disappointed. After walking around the center of town, I did find a place that sold a crab sandwich. For my $11 I got the smallest, plain, sandwich that had a very fishy, crab, on it. Nothing like we get in California on the wharf, as an example. They know how to make crab salads and sandwiches there! Cromer has a lot to learn in my opinion relative to a good crab sandwich.

After spending sometime on the beach in Cromer, we jumped in the car to go see another National Trust site named Felbridge Hall. It appeared to be a very nice house on a very large estate. The website said the house closed at 4 PM. However, when we got there, they said they close the house at 3 PM and we were too late. They need to read their own websites. Anyway, we walked around the estate to take some pictures and then we toured the ‘walled’ garden. Garden was ok but the house would have been better!

We loaded up around 4 PM and drove back to Norwich where I’m now writing this as we await to go to dinner and meet a friend of Anna Thackerays. George Hotel is the location we are going. I’ll update once I we have completed our evening.

Lastly, we have been accompanied by Anne Murray one of our young sisters serving with us in the temple. We have an extra room in this house open and she is going to use it tonight before heading back to the temple as we head more north and continue our journey. She has been fun to be around.

Pictures:

Looks like an old time telephone booth. No this is a chair that a person sat in and then the servants, using poles on each side, carried the person from one place to another.

The whole group at Blickling Estate. This place was pretty impressive, as I said. I big house.

Dave graciously bought supplies for an all American breakfast (with crumpets). It was yummy. All the men jumped in and helped cook it. You can see Scott and Carol (Nelson) in the back.

Blickling Estate

This is the entry way staircase as you walk through the front door. We could not walk up it. But we did take some back stairs that led to it so we could look down below it also.

They had people in period dress. Denise knows who these folks were. But I believe the woman said she bore 16 children. Amazing.

Huge library of books. They had bibles back to the 1200’s, I believe, there.

This picture is taken at Cromer Beach. These stairs lead down to the beach. The tide was out while we were there. So you could walk a ways out there without getting wet.

I drove here, walked the streets to find a good crab sandwich. I was severely let down. Hardly any crab on the darn thing. This crab town makes me ‘crabby’.

On the beach…love this girl. So fun to travel with.

This is the outside of Felbridge Hall. We could not get in, as I mentioned above. That was sad. But the garden was pretty nice.

This building was converted to a ‘dovecote’. It is a home for doves inside and out. There were many there flying around in the garden area. This is at Felbridge.