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  • Streets of Norwich – Broadsman Close

    Part of my Streets of Norwich project…..

    There’s not much to Broadsman Close, although since I’ve decided to visit every road in the city, this had to be included. Unfortunately, there’s not a great deal that can be written about this short stretch of road.

    This is pretty much the limit of the road, an access to the railway sidings and also to a couple of retail outlets. There isn’t much history to this area either as this was once just railway land between one end of the coal yard and the the shunting area for freight trains. Before it was owned by the railways, it was just fields.

    And another view to the entrance of the close. The road was created during the whole Riverside development complex, so somewhere around 2001.

    The Broadsman was a passenger train operated by British Rail which ran from London Liverpool Street to Sheringham between 1950 and 1962. On this point, I’d quite like for services to be named in this manner again, in a similar way to the way that American train services are. The Sheringham Zephyr has a certain ring to it….

  • Streets of Norwich – Stracey Road

    Part of my Streets of Norwich project….

    This is Stracey Road, located off of Thorpe Road and connecting to Lower Clarence Road.

    There’s not really much change to the layout of this area over the last 125 years, with the church behind the properties off Stracey Road still there.

    This building at the end of the road and in the photo above is Marlborough House, which was turned from a private residence into a guest house in 1969. It was also though a dwelling house in the past, as is in March 1909 a William Coxall broke into the property and stole an overcoat, gloves and half a cake. No point going hungry if you plan to go burgling I suppose…..

    These were quite decent houses at the beginning of the twentieth century (I’m sure they are now as well) and there’s a reminder of this as many of them employed servants and maids. The residence at number 10 was looking for a “mother’s help” in December 1902 and they promised that the accommodation for the applicant wouldn’t be in the cellar or attic.

    I had better not upload every single one of the 1939 registers as part of this project, as that might be seen as too much of an infringement of copyright. But, in 1939, there was an inspector of taxes, a surgeon, a children’s nurse, a retired LNER inspector, a railway clerk, a warehouse goods clerk and an inspector for the LNER who all lived on the street.

    On the issue of the street name, I don’t know why it took the name Stracey Road, although the Stracey baronetcy is a local title and the family were important figures in Norwich during the nineteenth century.

  • Streets of Norwich…..

    I was reading recently about Matt Green, who has a project to walk every single street in New York. All told, and including walking some other pedestrian routes in the city, he thinks that this will total around 12,000 kilometres of walking. I’d looked at this project a few years ago, but I was reminded about it by a film which was recently released about Green, entitled “I’m just walkin’”.

    Green writes about his project:

    “In many ways, this is an exhaustive approach to getting to know a place. By the time I’m finished, I’ll have seen as much of New York as anyone ever has. And yet, the sum total of my experiences over these thousands of miles will be just a tiny speck, imperceptible against the immensity of this city.

    What kind of truth can I hope to find? Every step I take will be deeply colored by many transient factors — the weather, the time of day, my mood, the people around me. I could go back to any given spot the next day and have an entirely different experience. Who knows how many fascinating things I’ll totally overlook? Maybe I’ll be facing the other way as I pass by, or maybe the fascination lies in some story or context that I won’t be aware of. There are countless indoor spaces that I’ll never see. My walking experience will be largely confined to street level, even though much of what makes New York New York exists above the first floor.

    If you try to make this quest into a conquest — an attempt to subjugate the bewildering vastness of this metropolis beneath the well-worn heels of my boots — then perhaps it seems dispiriting to contemplate how little of the city I’ll have actually seen and experienced after my extensive journey. But why would you ever want to know a place completely? The excitement of New York, and the whole world for that matter, is that there’s always something else to see, and something else to learn, no matter how long you’ve been around. To me it is profoundly encouraging to think how many secrets will still lie undiscovered after I’ve walked every last one of these goddamned streets. At its core, my walk is an oxymoron: an exhaustive journey through an inexhaustible city.”

    And, I like this as a project, the always seeing something new. So, not wanting to miss out on this transcendental experience, I’ve decided to do the same for Norwich. Not the being followed by a film crew bit, since I can’t imagine even the media giants of Look East would want to follow this rubbish, but simply completing a walking project which aims to enable me to see as much of Norwich as anyone else has.

    Most historians of Norfolk will be aware of the photographs by George Plunkett, an amazing archive of photos that he took over many decades. This has meant that I have an additional angle to look at my meanderings from, as he has photographed many of the locations where I’ll eventually be walking.

    By my estimation, starting as I am in August 2019, I’ll either finish this little project by the end of 2020 or I’ll have got bored of it and so there will be an incomplete set of streets listed. I’ll be surprised though if I don’t find out a lot more about Norwich and it history, which can only be an exciting thing…..

  • Robin Hood’s Bay – Laurel Inn

    Our third and final pub on the Friday night before the Smuggler’s Trod, the Laurel Inn.

    This little snug room is located at the entrance to the pub, with the bar area of the pub being up a few stairs. I liked this quirky room, it almost felt like a museum display, again all rather atmospheric.

    There were lots of random artefacts decorating the interior of the pub, which was busy and there was an informal feel to the whole proceedings. The beamed ceiling and the rustic nature of the walls made me wonder whether the layout of this pub had changed much over the last century.

    There were three ales on, and I’d already discovered that Leeds Pale isn’t well reviewed and I’ve had more than enough Adnams in the past. So, it was back to Old Peculier for me, although I had hoped for a more innovative selection of beers to choose from. The beer was fine, at the appropriate temperature and was well-kept, so that was all good. The service was also efficient and polite, with no wait to be served.

    The three pubs we visited all did feel like they were a bit samey in terms of the beer selection, and there’s an article in Northern Echo from 2016 which stated they were all ordered to stop serving alcohol when the council discovered that the landlord in charge of them all had died. I have no idea whether they are still commonly managed, but it might explain the paucity of choice with the beers.

  • Robin Hood’s Bay – Ye Dolphin

    I quite liked this pub as it had some charm to it and a traditional feel.

    From the Whitby Gazette in 1888 and I imagine that the billiards table had been in the upper room. The lower room is what today houses the pub’s main bar and it was full when we visited.

    I had to quickly check RateBeer as I hadn’t heard of Leeds Pale or Robinson’s Dizzy Blonde, but the ratings were poor and they’re not styles of beer that I usually go for in any event. As a side issue, I’m surprised Robinson’s think they’re being humorous with the name of their beer and it was perhaps inevitable that CAMRA have banned it from the Great British Beer Festival. Robinsons claim that the name refers to the artwork on the front nose cone of aircraft, but they seem to have conveniently forgotten that this isn’t the imagery they’ve had on the pump clips for some time.

    Anyway, Theakston’s Old Peculier is about the best beer that the brewery produce in my rather humble opinion and it’s a reliable option. The beer here was well kept and at the appropriate temperature, with the atmosphere in the pub being welcoming. It must be difficult to give a feeling of a local community pub in such a tourist location, but they seemed to be managing perfectly well.

  • Robin Hood’s Bay – Walk Between Pubs

    Just photos…..

  • Robin Hood’s Bay – Bay Hotel

    The impressive looking Bay Hotel, which dominates the lower part of the town and, perhaps more importantly, is listed in the Good Beer Guide. It’s the only pub in the town which has that honour and we visited the upper bar. Incidentally, the pub has a history of the building on its web-site, something I always appreciate.

    The bar area, with the service being reasonably efficient and always polite. It was also clean and well presented, although a little too hot for my liking. They had put a fan behind the bar to keep the staff cool, which was a good idea, but there didn’t seem to be any provision for customers.

    The beer selection was either Theakston Best Bitter or Theakston Lightfoot, and I went with the former. It was well kept and at the appropriate temperature, but not really to my taste as I struggled to find much depth of flavour in it, although I suppose it would an entirely acceptable session ale.

    The specials board.

    The colour of the fish meant to me that they’d either used a dark ale to make the beer batter or it was overcooked. I would have been surprised at the former as they didn’t have any dark beer, although they could have used Guinness. Anyway, it was the latter, it was overcooked.

    The fish itself was fine and the chips were adequate (I liked the hand cut and home made feel to them, but they were rather greasy), with everything being hot and it was also served promptly. The mushy peas were bloody awful, I have no idea what they’d done with them as there was a layer of water at the base and the taste was off. I might have asked if there was a check back, but there wasn’t, so I didn’t.

    The location is still used as a hotel, and I imagine it’s a really interesting place to stay. There are some decent views of the harbour from the pub windows, and I think also from at least some of the hotel rooms. The prices here for food and drink were towards the higher end of the scale, but it’s a tourist destination and nothing was unreasonable.

  • Robin Hood’s Bay – Walk Down to Bay

    On the Friday night we had a little walk down into the lower part of Robin Hood’s Bay, as we were staying in the upper part. It was a reminder of the 2018 Smuggler’s Trod walk, which goes through the town, and a foreboding sight for the 2019 Smuggler’s Trod walk.

    The reason for this post is just to show the photos I took of the bay. Although the town itself was quite busy, it felt quiet and calm down near to the beach. From here we felt we needed to test a few of the town’s pubs….

  • The Journey Back Home from Yorkshire

    After a lovely weekend in Robin Hood’s Bay and completing the Smuggler’s Trod LDWA challenge event, it was time to drive home to Norfolk. Well, not my driving obviously. Travelling on the Sunday of a Bank Holiday weekend seems a much better idea than driving on the Friday, as we fortunately didn’t have any of the delays that we encountered a couple of days ago.

    On another point, it doesn’t take too much effort to work out which McDonald’s meal I had in Swaffham, as opposed to what Clive went for……

  • Smuggler’s Trod Challenge Walk 2019 – Yorkshire Coast LDWA

    On August Bank Holiday in 2018 I thought it’d be a marvellous idea to walk the Yorkshire Coast LDWA’s Smuggler’s Trod challenge event which starts in Robin Hood’s Bay. I thought it’d be another marvellous idea to do the same in 2019, especially as I was able to book a good value B&B which was just three minutes walk from the start of the event.

    There were seven of us from Norfolk & Suffolk group, Jane, Clive, Simon, Brian, Kathleen, Hayley and last and certainly not least, me. I’d note here that this post is just about my experiences, as the others might not want me to broadcast what they got up to. And I am the sole of discretion as everyone in the group knows.

    Unlike some others on the walk, I didn’t get confused by this   🙂    It’s the black token which is dropped off at the, well, drop off bucket, and the tally card which is cut along the route. Being only three minutes from the start of the walk meant that I could walk over to register, then go back to get breakfast at the B&B before starting the event at 08:00.

    The turnout on the walk seemed high and there was a positive atmosphere at the beginning of the event. I was over confident and planning this as some sort of training event for the 100. As usual though, around three hours in I launched an inquiry whose idea it was to go on the walk. We had a debate and thought it must have been one of Peter’s ideas.

    Walking across the moor thing, the start of the walk is also the beginning of the Coast to Coast route. Although I don’t like being reminded of that bloody walk, but that’s a story explained in more than enough detail elsewhere on this blog.

    This is the drop down into the first checkpoint and it’s quite a fun little scramble down. Well, it’s not really a scramble, but I’ll call it that so that I sound braver. It can be quite slippery though and the marshals advised us to take extra care. I was extra careful as I knew that the checkpoint was nearby and I was hungry.

    The first checkpoint where I accidentally ate about three bags of jelly babies and several Yum Yums (doughnuts). This was just after the breakpoint of the short and long routes and although secretly I wanted to go on the short route, I didn’t want Simon to think I wasn’t as good a walker as he is.

    We went a bit wrong in this area last year, but all went well this year.

    I really like this checkpoint on the Moors, especially with the smuggler’s flag flying high. We caught up with Brian and Kathleen here, although Clive had long since sodded off. We had several theories why, but I can’t reveal on a public post why I thought he went off. I had more jelly babies here and I even had some tomatoes, which I hoped wouldn’t counteract with the healthy aforementioned jelly babies.

    I found the walk harder this year than last year, but it was because of the heat. The sun was rather unrelenting and the walk is quite exposed for some stretches on the moors, although there was a reasonable breeze throughout much of the day. Like some other walkers on the route I spoke to, I drank more water than I’ve ever done on a challenge event. One of the marshals said they’d had a few people drop out during the event, and they thought it was the heat which was the cause. It was a tough day out there on the moors for nine hours is all I can say.

    Incidentally, I heard one of the female entrants (not from our group) say that they had ‘chub rub’. I hadn’t heard of that, but it seems that it’s a real thing. I won’t give too many details here….

    And one of the smaller checkpoints where I got more jelly babies. Jane and I had been agreeing about how brave we were at this stage, but I won’t go on about that here.

    This middle section of the walk is beautiful and is much easier when it’s dry, otherwise it can be a little soggy in places. It’s a lovely part of the country to walk through, although I did wonder about how many snakes there might be in the undergrowth. I let Hayley go through first in case there were swarms of snakes as I thought she might know how to deal with the situation if it did arise.

    Winding through the trees, this was a welcome stretch of the route as it was shady. We didn’t know where Clive had gone, so we kept an eye along the route in case he had got lost, which was something which happened to certain members of the group last year. Although we don’t mention that of course.

    This was the checkpoint that I was looking forwards to, the one at the campsite. We were still in a big group at this stage that had sort of formed together, around thirty of us. The volunteers coped marvellously, making a variety of sandwiches quickly and efficiently. I had jelly babies and as many salty crisps and snacks as I could to ensure my salt levels weren’t depleted. I had more tomatoes as I’m reckless like that. Oh, and lots of cheese and jaffa cakes.

    It was shortly after this that one of our party managed to get ordered out of the pub for using their toilets. I won’t go into details though, but I’m sure that the story will be retold…..

    Robin Hood’s Bay comes into view.

    Just before the mast with about six miles to go. So very brave. I’ve still got a slightly sore foot from the Birmingham Canal Canter from two weeks ago, which never really got chance to heal since I did the 21 miles last week on the Suffolk coast, but it will be getting a lot of rest this week. Quite a lot of that rest will be in the pub.

    I did miss Jayne at this point, as she would have been able to do some bandaging and tell me how brave I was. Well, nodded knowingly when I asked if she thought I was being brave. It’s the same thing.

    The mast thing.

    The checkpoint near to the mast and I was pleased to get here as it marks the walk back into Robin Hood’s Bay. There was another entrant struggling at this point who had been affected by the heat. I knew that I wasn’t feeling entirely right as I started to crave melon, which can’t be healthy for me. I had some more jelly babies too though as I assumed I must be low on sugar.

    Walking along the coast towards Robin Hood’s Bay, it’s a lovely view.

    Onto the railway line….

    This is the former railway line which ran from Scarborough to Whitby and we were on this for over two miles as we approached Robin Hood’s Bay.

    I enjoyed this railway line section as it was flat and it was easy on the feet, although I still made Simon talk about politics to help the miles go even quicker. I also made Simon listen to my thoughts about the rail network, which I’m confident he very much enjoyed and I suspect was a real boost to him to help get him to the finishing line.

    That was kind of it for the walk, albeit there’s a very steep (I’m from Norfolk, it’s very steep to me) hill at the end. It wasn’t quite as bad as I remembered, so with one final exertion to climb this mountain I was within sight of the end. It was very lovely indeed to be able to see the hall where the event finished….

    A slightly blurry photo, there was either sweat or tears on the lens, I can’t recall which. I must admit, and I hope no-one from the Yorkshire Coast LDWA group reads this as I don’t like any negativity about the wonderful events run by volunteers, that I was marginally disappointed with the pie. I liked the pie and gravy they supplied last year at the event, and I had rather hoped for that again.

    Anyway, in the absence of my planned main course I did have two desserts and several Yum Yums, so all was well with the world. And there were some jelly babies left as well, so I helped the group eat them.

    On the subject of the Yorkshire Coast LDWA group, they were wonderfully friendly as ever and the event was very professionally organised. It’s so very kind of the marshals to give up their time and they were all happy throughout the event, although I don’t think I’ll be getting Norfolk & Suffolk LDWA to dress up at challenge events (they’d take it too far, I just know….).

    Very well done Julian. Oh and well done to the others. So very brave.