Blakeney Blog

Blakeney

Considerable excitement last Friday as Cait, my daughter, and I set off for a house in Norfolk. I have hardly ever been to Norfolk so was keen to discover Blakeney on the northern part of the Norfolk coast. My other daughter, Sian, had booked a house there for eight of us to gather for the long weekend. She and her husband and 12 year old daughter, Genevieve, [Gigi] had been in England and Carcassonne for over 2 weeks from their Truckee home in north Carolina. on holiday and catching up with family, SO obviously a big deal when the Californian contingent is in town!

The house......

The house was superb with the biggest garden imaginable. Even allowing for the assumption that there had once stood at least, three terraced cottages where the large house was, with the long gardens for vegetable-growing, so beloved of the late Victorians onwards, the grounds were huge, with views of the sea at the edge of the land. The weather remained in the ‘perfectly-sunny-with-light-breeze’ experienced for several weeks though the 30 degrees plus on Sunday were pretty unbearable by the afternoon. Meanwhile, back in Bury, the same extreme heat frazzled all the leaves on a beautiful young weeping salix on my kitchen terrace and simultaneously reduced the fuschia flowers in the hanging basket nearby by two thirds. A treat awaiting me on my return.

.....and part of the garden near  the terrace

In the meantime, we thoroughly enjoyed sitting on the terrace under an ample parasol enjoying the remarkably well-equipped kitchen and the several sitting rooms. It was just a wonderful opportunity to chill out, enjoy the family gathered together with the sole purpose of being together, and make relatively brief forays to the local quay with its fishermen, boats, holiday-makers and sun-seekers [quintessentially, ‘perfect’ as a description would fit!] with dedicated crab-hunting for the 12 year old and her father; strolling and occasionally buying, from one of the beach-side shops-in-sheds for most of us; a visit to a beach one late afternoon for almost everyone,[I stayed home to read The Sunday Times, alone, a rare treat] and one afternoon in Holt, another perfect little Norfolk town where most of the shops were Sunday-closed, though not all, permitting several of us to buy one or two items of clothing like trousers and tops. We left on Monday morning for various destinations in what can only be described as a reluctant departure after an amazingly satisfying interlude of 3 or 4 days. I felt privileged to have spent quality time with some of my best friends. I also appreciated spending time in the formerly

Crab fishing in the quay; a popular sport

unknown, beautiful Norfolk

Blakeney quay

.