A Lazy Sunday - Side Trips To Great Yarmouth & Lowestoft

It was a slow morning going down for breakfast at 8:45, updating the family tree on ancestry.co.uk and then taking a leisurely walk over to and up Station Road to the train station - this time the one going to Norwich.  Station Road was crowded with people wandering down to the beach.  This weekend has been the “Cromer & Sheringham Crab & Lobster Festival” with the streets and beaches crowded with holiday-goers.  The sun was shining brightly with only a few clouds in the sky.  It was a bright sunny early summer day.  My objective was to travel by train from Norwich out to Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft located at the top end of the English Channel.  I was curious to find out why the goal of the railway lines in this area was to reach these two towns. 

I boarded the 10:45 train to Norwich and watched the countryside go by as we sped first to Cromer and then on to Norwich.  There were fatted bunny rabbits in the fields, sticking their heads out above the grass looking at the train as we went by. What!!??  I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it!. 

Arriving at Norwich station, I bought a “Roamer” ticket for £4.90 which gave me unlimited travel for the day between Norwich, Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth.  As I had an hour to wait, I bought a sandwich and drink, sat down, and started my blog for the day.  British train stations are built with tall arched roofs that are open at the train end to the elements.  The roofing material is glass which allowed the sun to stream through the station making it a nice hot sunny day. 

I caught the 12:45 train to Great Yarmouth arriving at 13:20.  The area between Norwich and Great Yarmouth is on a large marshy flood plain that has been recovered from the sea.  The area is simply referred to as "The Broads" because it is a very broad flat expanse of marshy farmland.  Everywhere you look there are vast expanses of treeless flat land with ditches running in every direction.  Dotted throughout the countryside are strategically located wind mills from a couple of centuries ago that pumped the water from the field ditches into higher and wider central ditches and ultimately into a larger ditch that dumped the fresh water into the ocean.

Herds of beef cattle with the calves trailing behind their mothers, flocks of sheep with a couple of lambs in tow, horses rolling in the grass, swans nesting alongside the ditches or on the water with a couple of signets floating behind - everywhere you looked there were flocks of animals grazing. 

And here I thought it was only the Dutch who had reclaimed land from the sea!  I don’t know who thought of the idea first - the Dutch or the English - but there was a great similarity between the windmills of these two countries.  The windmills have long since been replaced with electric pumps but the volume of water is such that these large canal-like or river-like ditches make great places for boaters of all sizes and stripes, er, sails.  I could see groups of sea-kayaks making their way along these water bodies.  The train sped through the middle of these reclaimed marshes on its way to Great Yarmouth.   

Immediately on arriving, the train returned to Norwich for 13:55.  The next leg of my journey was to then take the train to Lowestoft which left at 14:55.  Boarding the train to Lowestoft, we travelled along the same kind of countryside only the fields were much broader with more expanses of water. 

The train hit a bunch of slow signals and two iron swing bridges with slow speed limits.  As a result, we arrived at 15:55 instead of 15:40 just in time to see a train pulling out of the Lowestoft station.  I sat on my train, expecting it to return to Norwich.  In a couple of minutes the conductor announced that this train was going to Ipswitch - way far away from Norwich and Sheringham!.  The train that had been pulling out as we arrived was my return train.  And because my train was late in arriving, I had missed my return trip back to Norwich.  The next train back didn’t leave for another two hours. 

This gave me a chance to walk around the corner into the middle of town, take a quick look at the beach, amusement pier, the fishing and shipping docks.  Lowestoft was one of those ubiquitous British seaside holiday towns where every Brit flocked to each summer.  Which is one reason why the railway lines were built in this part of the country. 

Being as it was close to supper, I had to have a plate of sea bass, fresh baby field potatoes, green peas, along with a pint of Guiness while I updated my blog on the patio of the Harbour Hotel overlooking the top end of the English Channel.  Life is difficult, ain't it?

As the train left Lowestoft, I saw a bunch of abandoned railway sidings.  These once held the fish vans (rail cars) that, in the mid 1850s to early 1950's, transported the day's catch from both of these towns on fast through trains down to London.  The fish landed on the Londoners' dinner plates as fresh as could be - less than 24 hours from being pulled from the sea. The fishing fleet has been much reduced since then and most of the fishing boats are big ones. 

I arrived back in Norwich at 18:33 with the train to Sheringham standing on the next platform.  I hopped on board and at 18:36 my train pulled out!  Not a minute to spare.  The trip back to Sheringham was very fast with the usual 100 fatted bunny rabbits hopping around the common as the train pulled into the station.  A leisurely walk down to the beach, along the top of the walk, a climb up the stairs and the walk, and I was back at my B&B. 

We’re off to Oxted tomorrow to look at the Bicknell side of the family.