Tuesday 12 December - King's Lynn & Dersingham

Where’s Bertie? He’s spending two nights at Pinecones Caravan and Camping, on the edge of the village of Dersingham, Norfolk, at a cost of £28 per night.

Weather: Showers, some particularly heavy.   

After sitting abandoned, untaxed and unwashed since the end of July, it was high time that Bertie got a little trip. Shorter than intended, thanks to a failure of memory causing me to commit us to be at home on Saturday, but four days is better than no days, so Bertie was packed, put back on the road and on Tuesday morning off we jolly well went.

Arriving in King’s Lynn just before noon, a quick lunch was had, over which I Googled to find things to see in the town, as a result of which we started by walking over to the Minster (it was just a plain church when we passed by, but didn’t visit, in 2011, but has since been upgraded). The building is reasonably impressive, and distinctly old looking, from the outside, but unremarkable (save for the racket coming from the organ which presumably was being tuned or otherwise fixed) on the inside.

A poor illustration of the minster. It was raining and I trouble myself to find a better vantage point.

It was raining as we came out of the church, which was unfortunate (and contrary to the weather forecast probabilities) as neither of us had any waterproof clothing with us, but it didn’t stop us from walking down some clearly historic lanes…

…to the riverside. That we recognised from walking along both banks on our way from Lowestoft to Ardnamurchan in 2011 – a sizeable detour necessitated to get to the nearest bridge.

Having walked along the riverside, we might have visited the Fisherfolk Museum, except that the town museum had equally good reviews and the latter is free in winter. A meandering walk through the town and at the museum we arrived, to find it closed to the public until 3pm due to a school group (it’s a small museum, not an over-zealous safeguarding measure). Not feeling inclined to hang around that long, we proved once again how bad we are at towns and were back at Bertie just over an hour after leaving him.

Two ill-timed downpours then struck as I made two trips into Morrisons. The first involved buying screen wash, the second a funnel to get the screenwash into Bertie’s vertically-mounted washer bottle neck (his usual funnel having been called into use in Erica a couple of weeks ago and not having been returned to its rightful place).

A visit to the ruins and quaint village at Castle Rising was next on my hastily researched agenda, but it wasn’t our day for being cultural as we arrived to find the castle and its car park closed, and no other suitable parking to allow us a look around.

An earlier-than-planned arrival at the campsite it was then!

The chap on reception was the most suited to his job that I’ve ever come across. A friendly and incredibly informative ten minutes was passed with him, and I returned to Bertie clutching three laminated sheets detailing local walks, complete with maps, text descriptions and photos of all the navigational landmarks along the way.

I perhaps wasn’t as grateful as expected about being upgraded from a Super Pitch to a Super Pitch with picnic pod, as even though the picnic pod provided us with a covered picnic table, with it being mid-December and with heavy shower coming through every few minutes, it would have been madness to abandon the comfort of Bertie to sit outside.

 

Not sure whether you can make out the picnic pod – I can’t on my phone’s screen. In the next row, behind the hedge, large shelters have just been erected over the standard picnic benches, with those shelters cunningly doubling up as solar panel array holders.  

With the rain coming down with only the briefest of pauses, I postponed my second walk of the day until, with ten minutes until sunset, I decided that I couldn’t put it off any longer. For the first 800m it stayed dry; for the last 1200m it lashed it down. I felt fully justified in staying in for the rest of the day!

Sunset walk – an out-and-back along a soggy path.