Well, the coronavirus (aka COVID-19) was indeed declared a pandemic, and has turned out to be a bit more than a mere “something”. Since mid-March, the country – in common with most of the globe – has been in various forms of lockdown, to include the closing of schools, universities, shops, pubs, restaurants, cinemas and theatres, the suspension of sporting events, restrictions on travel, where people can meet and in what numbers, and the mandatory wearing of face coverings. In the middle of all this, when the suspension of sporting events was lifted so as to allow games to go ahead behind closed doors, Liverpool did eventually win the premier league – albeit in late June when Man City lost to Chelsea at a very quiet Stamford Bridge.
Anyway, the current position on meeting is that up to 6 people from multiple households can get together. Restrictions have also been lifted on the opening of restaurants, hotels and pubs and so, at long last, we can resume the walk. John catches a very early train from Kingham to Paddington and joins Ben and Gary (all of us suitably face covered) on a service from Liverpool Street to Norwich where we arrive just before Mike’s train from Ely pulls in. The onward journey gets us to Great Yarmouth station shortly after 11:00 and we walk back to the sea front. The weather is warm and bright, so John decides to invest in a pair of sun glasses. The word “invest” is here used very loosely. The pair he chooses carries a logo which resembles Armani branding, but the price is just £5 and the bloke who sells them makes a point of congratulating John on his selection and saying that he has a pair. Not surprisingly, they are not particularly effective – although part of the reason for this is some cellophane over the lenses which John only realises later in the day that he hasn’t removed.
Once we’re back on the sea front, it takes a few minutes to establish where we finished in February, and we don’t get under way until 11:40. The first thing to do is to walk around the narrow strip of land to the south of the town which leads to the docks and lies between the sea and the east bank of the River Yare. We just about complete this in our first hour, by which time we’ve walked 3.3 miles and are back in the town – slightly closer to the station than when we set off from the sea front. The joys of purity! We cross the river at the appropriately named Bridge Road and spend the next hour doing another 3.2 miles down the west bank and around the small headland at the mouth of the Yare to reach Gorleston. This is clearly Great Yarmouth’s beach resort, and it’s very busy. There’s a large number of people sitting on and alongside the sand, so we stick to the path by the sea wall to continue our route south towards Hopton-on-Sea. We do get a bit of beach action along Hopton Sands, but then need to come inland because of some coastal storm damage. This takes us over a couple of fields, across the border into Suffolk and through the village of Corton. After this, we stay on a minor road for about a mile past a couple of holiday villages, but we’re then able to cut back through woodland to regain the coast. The approach to Lowestoft is notable for Ness Point, the most easterly location in the UK. This clearly doesn’t include the rocky jetty which juts out into the sea and from which two characters are fishing. The point on the mainland is marked by a large compass-like disc in the ground which shows the bearings and mileages to various places in the British Isles. For example the mainland’s most southerly point at The Lizard is apparently 352 miles away. We make our way into Lowestoft itself which is a really attractive town. We cross the harbour over a bascule bridge just before warnings sound and lights flash to indicate that it’s about to be raised to allow a vessel to pass through. We pause briefly to watch the road moving from the horizontal to the almost vertical before continuing to our overnight stop, the Hotel Katherine, which is a mile or so further on and which we reach shortly after 5 o’clock.
There’s an honesty bar in the lounge, so bottles of cider/beer are consumed immediately after check-in and before we go to our rooms to shower and change. However, we’re still ready to go out for supper at 6 o’clock. The reason for this relatively early departure is that we’ve been unable to book a table in the restaurant of the nearby Jolly Sailors pub (recommended by the hotel) but have been told that tables in the bar are available on a first come first served basis. After a 10 minute walk, we arrive to find that there are also tables outside the pub overlooking the sea, and one of them is unoccupied. It’s a warm evening and so we don’t leave the table unoccupied for long. A couple of hours later, we’ve worked our way through beers/ciders, a bottle of white and a bottle of red, and a fish supper. During the course of this, a general consensus emerges that the best fish meal which we’ve sampled on our walk is the one at O’Grady’s in Redcar at the beginning of 2018. This was at the end of Mike’s first day on the walk and he seems slightly surprised that the incredibly good value of that particular establishment has not been a consistent feature of some of our other stays over the last couple of years! Anyway, our meal at the Jolly Sailors, whilst good, is not a serious challenger to O’Grady’s crown. By this stage the weather has turned a tad chilly so we move inside for a couple of stickies, return to the Katherine, and are in our rooms soon after 9 o’clock.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Leave any comment