To East Anglia

I needed to make one last foray into the past after my brief picture-taking visit to Witham this morning. I first arranged to keep the rental car one more day so that I could visit one more tower where I used to ring during the time Kathy was stationed at RAF Lakenheath. I checked on-line (Why didn't I do this before my trip?) to make sure Thursday was still practice night at St Peter and St Mary Magdalene, Fordham. I 'phoned Roger, the Tower Captain, to confirm and let him know I would be there. And so, off I set at about 1pm. Why so early? To do more sightseeing and take pictures. The journey became another pilgrimage, not quite to the sea again, but to Lord Nelson's county to visit England's Nazareth . . . Little Walsingham.

On the way I stopped to take a quick picture of Constable country in Dedham Vale.

The river Stour here forms the natural boundary between Essex and Suffolk. It is very difficult to see in this shot but Dedham church tower is just visible, rising up above the middle of the tree line, in the distance. Much of the vale still offers views that John Constable saw and painted, especially along the river which passes to the north-west of Dedham. It's possible to hire a rowing skiff to row the three or four miles down river to Flatford Mill and Willy Lott's cottage. The river is tidal at Manningtree and flows out to the estuary between Harwich and Felixstowe.

A very fine restaurant, The Talbooth, lies at the Bottom of Gun Hill on the Essex side of the river as you come into Stratford St Mary.

I stopped again in Thetford home of Burrell traction engines, Thomas Paine, St Peter's suffer's from benign neglect (except for the bells).and St Cuthbert's is the parish church where all the action is; priory ruins (not pictured), earthworks and castle mound.Thetford is one of those unsung little towns, possibly because it was one of the 'rotten boroughs'. It is at the centre of the Brecklands, an area roughly bounded by the towns of Swaffham, Watton and Brandon, scrubland mostly given over to forest and a large Ministry of Defence training ground now. It also contains Grimes Graves, flint mines of the stone age. Brandon was main the flint knapping centre of England. View of Thetford town centre from the top of the castle mound. I didn't stop again until I reached the Slipper Chapel outside Walsingham; but I passed many notable sites such as the reconstruction of an Icene village (Boudicca's tribe; I've talked about Colchester without mentioning Boudicca??? Shock-horror) at Cockley Cley. The road offers a fine view of Castle Acre which contains ruins of another priory and a castle built by de Warrenne (I think); the parish church, dedicated to St Andrew, is quite prominent and the 'local' is a popular pub with travellers: The Ostrich.

The road also offers a dramatic view of another imposing church tower at Fakenham, another Norfolk market town. From Fakenham I took the road towards Wells-next-the-Sea, through the Barshams to Houghton St Giles and down a side lane through a ford to the Slipper Chapel and the Roman Catholic shrine of Our Lady of Walsingam. This is where pilgrims would leave their shoes to walk barefooted to the Shrine of Our Lady (St Mary, the Virgin Mother of Jesus, Star of the Sea, Queen of Heaven) who had appeared to a Lady Richeldis in the thirteenth century. Mediaeval England was very much 'into' St Mary the Virgin which is why so many English churches are dedicated to her. I didn't doff my shoes to walk the last mile to the shrine which was probably originally in the grounds of the Augustinian priory of which only the gatehouse, in Little Walsingham High Street, and a portion of the church remain. The Anglican shrine was built in the 1920's and has been a centre of national pilgrimage at Pentecost since.

Of especial interest to me is the Chantry chapel designed by Laurence King and built using, yes, hand-made bricks from W.H. Collier.Pilgrims are accommodated in the hospice,which has grown over the years, and the public is invited to enjoy the gardens which contains the stations of the cross.One natural public place of the village is The Commons. At the other end of the village is Friday Market. There are also Friary ruins, Sunk Road (reported to be haunted) and the fine parish church redecorated by Laurence King after a disastrous fire which gutted the building in the early 1960's. Mmm, I didn't take any pictures of the distinctive flint-and-brick work and the Dutch influenced gable ends . . . I stayed for Mass at the shrine so didn't walk more as time was pressing and I needed to eat and then aim to arrive at Fordham for ringing practice at 7:30pm.

Catching up

I took a long drive yesterday evening (it's light until nearly nine o'clock) up to Diss, Norfolk by way of the A12 and A140, across the A1066 to Thetford (lost again for a little while) then followed the roads down to Bury St Edmunds (roads all different again) to Sudbury (Ah! no changes to the roads or traffic flow for forty years) The road from Sudbury to Halstead and thence to Braintree is just as hairy (i.e. dangerous!) as when I used to cycle it back in the days when I did a lot of cycling. Many stretches of those roads now have limits of 40 and 50 miles per hour and I obeyed the 30mph limits through villages

I roused myself up this morning wondering what to do and chatted with Anthea; William is on 'lates' this week and lay in bed watching the telly most of the morning. I read and edited yesterday's blog adding a few more pictures. I pondered the things I have not done: the folk festivals I did not get to; the open ringing days I missed; the steam days at railway preservation sites like the East Anglian Railway Museum at Chappel, Essex (Blur's first gig in 1989 I learned from a local paper). I know I'll take this video of the other pond and the top of the garden. The pond contains a variety of fishes: ghost koi, green tench, leather carp and a couple more that I won't attempt to spell.

After lunch I nipped down to Kelvedon to buy tickets for the first night of Kelvedon Players' production of Alan Ayckbourn's How the Other Half Loves. The 'nip' turned into another wander around the village and a visit with Carol and Eva, old friends of Anthea. Carol took me round his collection of Great War and WW2 memorabilia of everyday life displayed in a Quonset hut which used to be on the Rivenhall airfield. Many Americans who served in the bomb groups stationed there have visited, and contributed to, Carol's collections. Off ringing again tonight . . .