Hickling holiday, Norfolk Part 2

I felt a bit better on Wednesday and we went out on the boat. We were supposed to pick the boat up at 9am but we had gone to the wrong boat yard as there are two with the same postcode! We finally got on at about 9.30am, we went along Heigham Sound and up to Hickling Broad. At the end of Hickling Broad we stopped at The Pleasure Boat Inn (where we had been on Sunday). We stopped there for a bit then made our way back along Hickling Broad and tried to make a cup of tea but the gas had run out! The boat owner said to come back up to The Pleasure Boat Inn to get another gas bottle but unfortunately he didn't have the right one! So, he let us have the boat for two hours extra, which meant we didn't have to rush back. Again, we went back along Hickling Broad and into Horsey Mere and up to Horsey Windpump. We didn't go into the mill but bought drinks and ice creams from the shop, the mill is owned by The National Trust. After we had finished our drinks we went back along Horsey Mere and Heigham Sound to the boatyard. In all, we had about six hours on the boat, it was a good day and I enjoyed it! We didn't really see that much wildlife and some of the photos came out quite blurred. You can find out about the Norfolk Broads here.

Because I took a lot of photos I thought it would be easier to make a collage of some of them. I have noticed that the collages sometimes look blurred but if you click on them they come into focus.

On Thursday, although the weather wasn't great, we finally got to the beach, we went to Sea Palling and we found 'A trust you car park', basically they trust you to put the money in the box and it all goes to charity. The tide was quite high when we got there and we spent some time looking in the rock pools, we found a few bits including a starfish, lots of sea gooseberries and quite a few dead crabs. We went for lunch at Sandy Hills Snack Bar as we could take the dogs in too and then played in the amusements for a bit. Back on the beach the tide had gone out quite far and we walked out to have a look and I found, what I think, is sea glass! I'm not an expert so maybe someone can tell me if it is sea glass. I loved the beach but we didn't have as long there as I would have liked.

Our beach finds

Sea glass?

On Friday we went to Wroxham Barns, which has some shops, a pottery place, a small farm and a soft play area. It wasn't really my sort of thing, I'm not really into shopping for hours but the others wanted to go. On Saturday I stayed at the cottage while some of the others went into Great Yarmouth to do some shopping. In the afternoon there was a Strawberry Fair just along the lane so we went to that. It was in someone's garden and was really nice, they had a BBQ, beer tent, tombolas, hoopla, stalls and a children's play area. On Sunday we packed and tidied up and made our way home.

The end of the holiday was tinged with sadness as we received a phone call on Saturday evening to say that a friend, who is only 31, had had a heart attack and probably wouldn't pull through and I have just had a phone call to say she passed away this evening.

 

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