Day Four - Norwich - 14 May

We decided to catch the bus from Diss to Norwich for the day. It was an overcast and quite cold day but despite this we had a very good day sightseeing around the capital of Norfolk. We were very organised and drove to the bus station far too early for the bus and as it was cold we spent thirty minutes in the car reading the background on Norwich and fogging up with windows! It took about an hour to get to Norwich through a number of small villages across Norfolk’s flat plains. When we alighted from the bus we stood outside a Waterson’s book store which had a coffee shop. It was eleven o’clock and we were ready for a coffee so we walked straight up the bookstore’s steps into the warmth. Liz moved on to visit the cathedrals to photograph some of the stain glass windows for her workshop and Tomas, Henk and I caught a hop-on and hop-off red double-decker bus to give us an overview of the city and to get our bearings. We really enjoyed the commentary on the bus as it was very informative. During Victorian times Norwich had enough churches to visit a different one every Sunday for a year and enough pubs to visit a different one each day for a year. There aren’t as many churches and pubs now but there still seemed to be plenty of them around. We were all impressed with Norwich.

It was much larger than we had expected and had a good combination of old and new. We met Liz for a late lunch at the Norwich Cathedral refectory and then toured the cathedral. It is a spectacular building over nine hundred years old and is said to be one of the finest complete Romanesque buildings in Europe with the highest Norman tower and largest monastic cloisters in England. We were fascinated by the medieval roof boss sculptures of which there is a thousand of them.

When we left the cathedral grounds we walked through the lovely cobbled street of Elm Hill which is often used for films. It takes its name from the Elm trees that once stood in the square but died from Dutch Elm Disease and has since been replaced with Plane trees. Liz and I visited the very large open market and Henk and Tomas visited Surrey House with its exquisite marble.

We walked through the beautiful Royal Arcade with its wide range of little shops. We found a country clothing shop celebrating the Diamond Jubilee in an amusing way with the Queen, Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge in their window.

We caught the five thirty bus back to Diss and thought we would we would go to our local pub, The Cock Inn (don’t laugh!), for dinner. Unfortunately, food is not served on Monday or Tuesday and we moved onto the local fish and chip shop for takeaway. Just as we arrived the heavens opened and Henk and Tomas braved the rain to buy our dinner.