Our Weekend in Norfolk

Firstly, my thanks to everyone for the birthday cards and wishes – most appreciated – and we were both rather impressed with the sheer volume of them!

Anyway, yes, it was a lovely weekend. On Friday, I'd been out to work on the PFH in the morning, then back home again. In the evening, we took a First Capital Connect train through to Kings Lynn, which is 54 ¼ miles from Royston by train, and about the same by road. As it was early evening, we had a through train, and took a cab to The Globe Hotel. We were staying there two nights, and had supper there on Friday night, as well as breakfast (well, more like brunch!) both mornings.

On Saturday, after a browse through the shops (it was wet and windy!) we had planned to sample the Norfolk Green Coasthopper service(s). We had intended to do this early last year, but for various reasons, we didn't. So, after brunch, we went for the bus, and each bought a Coasthopper Rover – all day travel along the coast for £6 each. The ticket machines have been upgraded since this review of Elaine's visit five years ago – I think the one in Elaine's scan was a laminated Wayfarer Saver, but the company are now using Wayfarer TGX machines.

The intention was to do as much of the route as we could in one day. Well, it's actually three seperate services, which change destination. The bus starts from Kings Lynn displaying Hunstanton 35, then changes to Wells (service Coasthopper), and then at Wells, changes to show Sheringham or Cromer (Coasthopper). The buses run through with the same drivers and tickets, and it's an enjoyable 50 mile or so run each way. We started at 1225, so we went Kings Lynn – Hunstanton – Wells – Sheringham on Optare Solo 316, named Pocahontas, seen here at Sheringham at the end of the journey. The driver has reset the blind to Sorry Not In Service, which flicks on the bottom line to include not only the new Coasthopper website, but NG pages on Facebook and Twitter as well!

We had arrived here, beside the preserved North Norfolk Railway...

 

 

 

... and the National Rail station (for National Express East Anglia Bittern Line trains to Norwich), which are apparently being linked for the first time in over four decades.

We had a look around the town, and found a rather nice sweet shop called The Chocolate Box amongst others, before going back for a bus back to Lynn. Our return bus, Solo 315, was dubbed Thomas William Coke, and this took us back over the same roads to Lynn. By this point, the light was starting to fade.

 

Upon arrival in Lynn, we went out to dinner at Pizza Express, this is Caroline...

… and me!

 We had a good rest, and returned back to Royston on Sunday. We'd like to go back at some stage of the summer. Since then, we've mostly been working on the computers – the Mac I was using is on it's last legs, so now using the bigger of the two laptops as a desktop replacement computer.

It was a lovely weekend, and you can see the pictures taken here, as well as those taken on Tuesday too.