[Photos] Norfolk

[marshtide]

Norfolk - the bit of Norfolk that I know - basically contains an unreasonable amount of sky and water.



(This was the view from directly behind where we were based. We were camping. Somewhere in the distance there is the sea, but there's a lot of marshland in between.)











And some seals.



And ridiculous, impractical, pretty little villages currently inhabited almost entirely by people whose first homes are in London.





(Note that this road is just about two cars wide, has no real pavement and walls on both sides, and is used by a local bus. Also you have to walk along it to get anywhere in the village.)



Val claims to have spent the duration feeling as though she was on a film set, and I have to say I do rather see her point.

What I don't have are any photos of the towns we were in, which is mostly because I was actually feeling slightly stunned, I think; my concept of A Lot Of People has been adjusted to mean "Drottninggatan on a saturday", or "Any Roslagen Town In Summer". The reason this is a completely inadequate concept for dealing with tourist places in the UK is that Sweden has a lot of space and not many people; in the UK the reverse is true. This doesn't just mean that there are fewer wide open spaces in the UK - it also means that almost any town is going to contain a way more concentrated mass of people. The main roads in towns are smaller. The pedestrian roads are smaller. Buildings are smaller and much more squashed together.

As you can see from the photos above, that's pretty much because the UK has so many historic buildings (relative numbers are down to both the fact that a lot more older buildings are made of stone/brick in the UK versus wood in Sweden and the fact that the UK has been a rich country for way, way longer). They're very pretty. But it keeps everything feeling small, and I actually felt rather claustrophobic when we went to places like Wells and Sheringham, which is a problem I think I've basically only had to anything like the same extent in supermarkets* since I've been over here.

For the UK Norfolk doesn't feel very busy at all. And then!


* I promise you that you just do not want to try and fight Swedes for fresh potatoes in the biggest supermarket for miles around at midsummer. You don't!

Comments

[dancing_moon]

Lovely pictures!

[marshtide]

Thanks! :)

[jetsam]

I'm sure there's normally more mud than that. Were you strategically taking photos when the tide was in?

I've never thought of those roads as particularly odd before. Interesting. That said, my sense of scale comes down to 'London' and 'anywhere else' so I'm possibly a lost cause.

I like the Norfolk coast. Salt marsh and water and lots of sky

[marshtide]

Mm, well, it wasn̈́'t strategic, but if you're going out on boats and taking a kid to go swimming then there will tend to be more water than is entirely representative. *g*

[jetsam]

Makes sense. For us it was always 'too busy' when we were sailing, so photos always happened at low tide

[marshtide]

Well, this time we didn't have a boat of our own, since mum isn't confident enough to sail by herself so there's no point in her keeping one around for the few times brother or I descend and feel like it. Mum promised me she'd hire one so we could sail while we were there and then she forgot. Or changed her mind and forgot to tell me. Or whatever it was.

So, err, lots of time to take photos from the boats we were on, since we didn't get to sail them. ;;

[jetsam]

Whoops. Still, you got on the water, and that's the main thing. (I suspect my father still doesn't quite trust me, and a camera, near water, anyway)

[pulchritude]

Why do you call it an impractical village? :P

[marshtide]

Mostly because of the roads. No pavements, lots of cars, not even really enough space for the cars to pass each other in places. It makes them rather terrifying to walk through.

[antisoppist]

Where I live is like that. There are pavements, but only on one side of the road and they tend to switch sides precisely on blind bends where crossing is deadly.

Lovely sky!

[marshtide]

Sounds about right! Norfolk, I believe, holds that things like pavements are newfangled and not to be trusted...

Sky is what that part of the world does best, I think. :)

[crystal]

=D pictures!

[ex_tongari766]

Most appropriate icon to accompany the photos!

And they are lovely photos. I love the water/sky/stones on the beach and seals ;_; and the village, full as it might be of Londoners lol...

This sounds silly but I miss the English countryside and the weather (not the crazy wind, etc, just the constant cloud cover). I like sunlight but there was always something very comforting about always the clouds around. Like a comforter.

Anyway xD; glad you had fun on your holiday!

[marshtide]

When I grow up I want to be Snufkin.

Thanks. :)

I have a kind of conflicted relationship with the English countryside, having grown up in a really rural place (near the one the photos are from, but not nearly as pretty - more run down and forgotten), but some bits of it are definitely really lovely.

[oliphaunts]

SEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALS omg I want to smoosh them -- but then they'd probably just flop and asphyxiate me to death instead. ): other than that, pretty pretty!