weekend in norfolk - part 1

We went camping in Norfolk over the weekend. Monday (today) is a holiday and the weather promised to be fairly good so on last Friday evening we booked ourselves a tent pitch and on the high-rope forest adventure course Go Ape for Sunday in Thetford Forest. We downloaded a couple of walks that we might do and packed our tent, sleeping bags, lunches and off we went at Saturday lunctime. We finally decided that we were going to do a 6-mile route near East Wretham.

The first photo is of the sign we followed for about half the route. The walk starts off in a forested area. And I managed to park the car right next to a tree. I got no end from Pete about that - he insists that the car was in the tree. We should have taken a photo. Anyway, so we start off in the forest and there were quite a few other walkers and dogs in this area. It's nice how you can take dogs along on such walks here - dogs aren't allowed in Bukit Timah Hill or MacRitchie Reservoir in Singapore (I remember).

Pete's very pleased with this second photo of the green bug so I have to put it up here. He did an excellent job map-reading and bashing nettles. I was busy avoiding nettles and bees. The weather was sunny and warm but not too hot. Perfect for walking. We brought plenty of water with us. A couple of summers ago we went walking along the Fens and got quite dehydrated - it was the hottest day of that summer. This time we had plenty of fluid, nothing heavy on our shoulders, a warm sun sun and a light breeze. My mind kind of switches from my thoughts to watching out for nettles to appreciating the countryside. This walk is rather different because we didn't see anyone else for the first half. It was just the sound of the trees, fields and insects.

Shortly after this photo of me in the field of some-type-of-grain was taken we had to walk through an overgrown area with thistle. These are plants with sharp pointy leaf edges. They don't sting but can hurt quite a bit. Then we got to a field with a neighbouring field of evil-looking black cows. Cows are fantastic from a distance when I think of how great milk is. But they are pretty scary when they start getting up and staring at you. We got out of there not fast enough. Soon we found ourselves in a little village and stopped for a quick drink at the local pub.

The walk took us three hours to finish. Our legs were pretty tired at the end. Another half an hour or so later and we were at the campsite. £8 for a night's stay! Pretty good if you ask me. The lady tending the site was friendly and allowed us to drive around to pick our spot. We parked beside a couple who had a similar sized tent. Most of the other people had crazy big tents (the ones with like a west wing, central wing and east wing kind) or caravans with gazebos. Their makeshift homes did look really good and we thought about how long it took to put those things up. We made do with, what felt like, our play tent. Ours was literally a five minute job. It was nonetheless very well made, and we were waterproof from the next morning rain. We parked beside a family of four (we figured from their conversations) which provided endless amusement. "I don't like camping anymore!", screamed their little boy at one point, despite profuse apologising from his father. Haha. I can only imagine how much fun it would be camping with a family.