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26 September 2015 (Saturday) - Castle Acre

I woke at about 5am this morning and lay awake listening for whoever else was staying in our guest house to go into *my* bathroom. At 6.30am I realised that rather than waiting for them to get in the bathroom first (which would really boil my piss) I should get out of my pit and do my ablutions first. So I did.
We met the newcomers at brekkie. They were hippies (!) And vegetarian hippies as well. I wasn't having any of their nonsense as I scoffed my sausages and bacon.

The hippies said their goodbyes; they were only staying the one night. As "er indoors TM" got ready I watched for deer out of the conservatory window. Unfortunately there weren't any about today. "er indoors TM" was soon ready and we set off for today's excusion.
When we decided to come to Norfolk for our holibobs we asked on the "Geocaching in East Anglia" Facebook group if there were any must-do caches in the area. The first place we were told about was the geo-walk around Castle Acre. We were told it was a walk of five and a half miles which would take about three hours, so we had our morning mapped out for us. We found the place and started walking. I made a minor navigation error initially, but I can throw the pair of us over barbed wire fences when the need arises. Despite our little diversion we had an excellent walk. We saw trout swimming in the river, we found friendly cows, and we even saw a grass snake. If only I had been quicker with the camera...
As we walked we found ourselves passing the entrance to the ruins of the Abbey, so we paid the nice lady from English Heritage and had a liittle diversion looking round the place before continuing with our walk.

As a geo-walk it was good; all of the cache hides had excellent GPS co-ordinates. Personally I would have put in a few more caches (but that's just me). But like all cache series the published distance was something of an underestimate. Billed as a stroll of five and a half miles, "Hannah" measured it as a tad under eight miles (and I did turn off the GPS as we took our abbey diversion).
Mind you for all that the walk was described as one of three hours, the same description did warn us that it was possible to spend all day in the area. We did spend quite some time looking round the Abbey and then at the end of our walk we had a look round the castle then had a cream tea. Our original plan was to visit Castle Acre in the morning and then go on to Sandringham in the afternoon. We finished our cream tea shortly before 5pm.
We abandoned our plans to visit Sandringham. We'll go there another time.

We'd had advice for where we might have dinner. The Ferry House in Surlingham is only a mile fom our guest house, but what with there being a river in the way it really is quicker to walk there from the guest house than it is to drive there. But we were coming from Castle Acre so we drove.
The place was welcoming; the staff friendly. the beer choice was good and the food excellent. I'd certainly go back again if the opportunity arose.
I took a few photos whilst we were out and once back to base I put them on-line. As I type this I'm feeling rather sorry for our host at the guest house. There is some big rugby game on the telly; he's been raving about it since the moment we arrived. He's been looking forward to it because tonight the guest house is full and he's been expecting to watch the match with a room full of like-minded rugby fans. Everyone else is currently cowering in their rooms, and I'm only in the lounge because I've paid good money to be here.
Periodically (when something rugby-ish happens on the telly) he's making noises of amaazement and wonderment. He simply doesn't understand that I have absolutely no interest in the rugby whatsoever and hasn't noticed I've spent the last hour messing on my lap-top...
Apparently England lost and "we" have got to do well against Australia next week... Speaking for myself I'm not going to make any effort against Australia at all...



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