Contrasts

Dreadful night…the woman in the next room decided to phone home at midnight and talked almost constantly for far too long…almost knocked on the wall! Couldn’t sleep afterwards either for a while…noisy plumbing and occasional traffic right outside the window.
Breakfast was in a surprisingly crowded refectory….you’d never guess all these people were staying here since we’ve not really seen anyone anywhere else!
Seemed bright and so we headed to Holkham Hall and enjoyed a good walk all around the lake, seeing deer quite close up but declining the walled garden visit (£5.50 each!). We timed it really well as just as we got to the cafe the heavens opened and it poured for a while so we sheltered indoors. Not the best coffee but had time to find out more about the Hall (odd design and brick built) and the Earls of Leicester who live here, and S did more research on the garden statue that she’s thinking of buying.
We explored Creake Abbey but very soggy still and so bought some Bakewell tart in a nice farm shop and headed back to the hostel for a while. I promptly fell asleep for half an hour and felt much better for it!
Off to Brancaster, thinking we’d find a beach but first of all stopped at the harbour which was, like Wells, basically more mud flats and not what we were expecting. Lots of sailing boats but all just lying on the mud (extra). Went further along and did find the beach….huge empty one! The sea was still almost out of sight, but at least there was a huge expanse of sand so we had another good walk.Started very sunny but dark clouds were gathering…these two photos were taken looking one way then the other from virtually the same spot! We’ve certainly seen the famous big Norfolk skies today…
We turned round when it looked like rain was imminent and headed to Thornham, a bit early for our supper booking. Surprised to find the pub was only serving outdoors …it wasn’t really warm enough, but they brought our booking early so we didn’t have to wait around.
After giant burgers we rolled home and had a quiet TV evening again whilst there was a procession around the garden outside. We were both tired and headed to bed early, but then my next door neighbour started her late night phone calls again….grr!