The Poppy Line and The Holt Flyer

Parking at Holt and taking the North Norfolk Railway to Sheringham and back is a breeze and as is turns out, a cheaper option for the car parking, especially since we have two cars. But we've done that before, so starting at Sheringham presented and extra opportunity to travel into Holt town aboard the London Routemaster bus, dubbed the Holt Flyer. Without being definitive, the website indicated that the bus would be running today and that cheaper tickets could be purchased at Sheringham Station.

The North Norfolk Railway, affectionately known as the Poppy Line, winds its way through the countryside, preserved by many volunteers, all of who do a fabulous job maintaining and operating this wonderful steam and diesel attraction and all the associated buildings, gardens and facilities. The line is constrained between the current railway extending eastwards from the newly built Sheringham Station across the road and the end of the line at Holt, where the bypass was built on the path of the old tracks extending further west. It is therefore a short journey of just over 5 miles.

In contrast to the tale told on the web site, staff at the Sheringham ticket office were unswathing in their assertions that the Holt Flyer would not be running today, it's summertime service having ended yesterday. They even produced a printed timetable as evidence of this. We were assured that a service bus would be available to complete our journey to the town, so all was not lost, especially as we'd splashed out only a few minutes ago the not insignificant sum of £14 to park to cars adjacent to the station.

The journey to Holt was a pleasurable and sedate as ever and thoughts turned to previous journeys which included Dad, known for his keenness to get steamed up as regularly as possible, sadly very much an increasingly distant memory. On arrival at the westerly terminus of Holt, I popped into the ticket hall to check that my eyes weren't deceiving me. There at the end of the driveway, nearest the road was a large red double decker vehicle with what appeared to be potential customers boarding it. The lady in the ticket office thought this was doubtful and suggested I enquire with the platform staff who seemed to think the bus was indeed running and was dismissive of the Sheringham staff who'd told us to the contrary. By this point, we'd received news that the bus was run by a separate company on a number of occasions, which seemed to be an excuse for relinquishing responsibility for whether it was running or not. As a customer, I would have thought it in the best interests of the railway to be informed of the bus movements. Anyway, we returned to the back of the queue in the ticket hall to buy bus tickets, now being reasonably confident that it would run in the knowledge that buying the same on the bus itself is more expensive. We were told that we could only buy tickets at a reduced price as Sheringham Station!! The bus is run by a different company, so we'd be best to sort it out with them. At the end of a short negotiation we did sort it out to everyone's satisfaction, well done to the bus conductor and pull your socks up railway. I have to say, in every other respect, the railway and staff were faultless, but a little communication with the bus company would serve them both very well. I'll be writing to them on the subject in due course.

The town of Holt abounds in equal measure with boutique shops selling an array of clothes and charity shops, the latter being good hunting grounds for jigsaw puzzles and games. We enjoyed a spot of lunch at Byfords, having its roots planted in Ironmongery but now very much a deli, restaurant and the self named Posh B&B.

All too soon, it was time to make the return journey to Sheringham by Routemaster Bus (yes it is running until Saturday this coming weekend) and the train as pictured above arriving into Holt Station.