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[Photos] Norfolk
Aug. 18th, 2010 08:42 pmNorfolk - 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.)
( More photos )
And some seals.
And ridiculous, impractical, pretty little villages currently inhabited almost entirely by people whose first homes are in London.
( Pictures )
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!
(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.)
( More photos )
And some seals.
And ridiculous, impractical, pretty little villages currently inhabited almost entirely by people whose first homes are in London.
( Pictures )
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!
