September 27-29

 September 27-29 A quiet weekend and a Monday adventure.

Saturday we went to Pensthorpe - A charitable Conservation Trust, Gardens.ponds, wildlife and bird life, plus sculptures Was nice to have a wander around a small portion of the total of 700 acres. Ronda volunteers here doing some gardening, so we got in for nix.

This would have been my favourite sculpture that we saw, a few others were mosaic glass and perhaps a little bit bling in the garden space. Some wildflowers below in the millennium garden.

I was keen to see the cranes and flamingos, got a photo of two out of the three species, unfortunately the one with the spikes crown was hiding behind vegetation.

Then there were the flamingos, this is the time when you need a proper camera, but still a joy to see them. Apparently one of the original ones is over 50 years old, who knew they can live that long?

We walked further around towards a more wooded area with some more subtle sculptures.

Very beautiful grounds, but we were feeling a bit tired from our last two days of outings so called it a day, and home we went.

Sunday we were expecting some rain, and indeed we did get some during the day, but in the morning Ronda and I went foraging, for blackberries, they were quite small, and a little past their best, but we did get enough for a blackberry and apple crumble. We were walking around the edge fo this field to find the blackberries.

We also went back to the walnut tree, that drops them all over the road in the village, I should have photographed the walnuts, they are the size of a small egg! The village sign and a telephone box which is now a book library.

These are sloes I believe? Flavour for one’s gin! The rain started to set in so we headed back home and had a lazy afternoon.

Monday, and it’s time to be more active again, so we set out for Weybourne (the four of us, including Tim’s daughter, Carmen, who is staying for a few days before moving up to Shetland to live. We are to walk the cliff path to Sheringham and back. To get there, we did go down some of those notorious English roads that only have room for one vehicle, so someone has to reverse to find a bit of space to allow the cars to pass.

Looking inland from the cliff path, that is a windmill to the right and below looking back along the cliff, some slip streams overhead and the North Sea coming onto a stony beach.

It was a great day for a walk, just a gentle breeze on the way there to keep you cool.

Sheringham had a cafe looking over the beach? Don’t think we would call it a beach  in NZ. But was a nice place to stop for lunch. I had mushrooms and Stilton on sour bread toast with rocket and onion marmalade, very tasty. It was also a fishing village so crab salad was on the menu and fish and chips seemed to be popular further down the bay. 

Sky was amazing, with a mixture of clouds and slipstreams that hung around for a few hours, this photo above is at the end of our walk, back where we started from. 10.6 km in all. That is not one house it is 5 units on the cliff in the middle of nowhere. 

We went home a different way, trying to avoid the very narrow roads, stopped at another village called Blakeney, that had some very pretty little streets and houses

We were hoping for an ice cream but settled for a bakery, cups of tea, and an elderflower drink for me, plus cakes, before walking back around to our car and home again.