The long and winding road.

Took the slow road westbound the other day. Makes a change from the shorter and faster A148. Swung off just past Letheringsett and along the long flint wall bounding the parkland and the dammed Glaven that runs through  the Bayfield Estate. Home to an avenue of gunnera.

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The dam that Bailey wrote he sat on just a few hours after a long and ultimately fruitless battle with a massive unseen Mediterranean conger.

Looping  round the Glaven flows under the red brick bridge at Wiveton before making it seaward at Cley next the Sea which it hasn't been for a long  time.

On the A149 and wending through the summer bottle neck that is Stiffkey, one time parish of the Vicar of Stiffkey who made it his education to ahem, save the souls of London's fallen and gin sodden women of the night. He was eaten by a lion in a cage eventually. Stiffkey is also the home of the Stukey Blue cockle. And divided by the Stiffkey River. which like the Glaven is one of Norfolk's 9 chalk streams.

Norfolk pastoral. Gorgeous when that little river leaves it's banks each winter too and spreads over the flood meadow. There are avocet on the scrapes downstream too.

Norfolk particularly is the home of flint, red brick and pantiles and of course the hollyhock. And the screamimg swifts.

Past Wells next the Sea (which like Cley isn't next anymore) and we are running along the miles of Norfolk red brick walls bounding the paladian and feudal servitude that is the Holkham Estate and with the inland Burnham's it's the start of miles and miles of Boden clad Bray Villes. One day TT the glorious North East diaspora will rise up and smite them to the ground...

A good place to start the Great Insurrection would be Burnham Overy Staithe TT. The man seen industriously scrubbing a mooring buoy heartily agreed with my observation (based on his tirade of invective and spittle) that he wasn't feeling the Range Rover Evoque load of ladies who lunch exercising their massive hounds in the creek.  He's one of the advance guard softening them up for when the Great Rage falls on the land.

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Just above the tidal confluence of another Norfolk chalk stream, the River Burn is divide round and under Burnham Overy Lower Mill.

Not much to see through the Polaroids in the main pool. Composing the abstract below in the main flush I caught a flash of mahogany and creamy white.

Time for some serious looking now and on with the CPL filter. And yes, spots and that useless adipose fin.

 Browns and at least two really serious rainbows

Back on the road and into serious BrayVille land as we hit Brancaster and it's Staithe.

 Found this classic North Norfolk Poppyland tableau just outside the Boden enclave. Truly stunning. Running red with the blood of the braying class come the Glorious Day.

Hunger called but baulked at the cost of an artisan burger in a yurt. What the feck are stealth chips?

Made do with some rather nice mackerel pate. But sea bass? Wild or not you are on the list for that heinous crime Mr. Fishmonger.

We are yet to determine what this is from. Very long..

Nice table. But £350 though.

As we hit nearly sunny Hunny we are into the distinctive carstone construction that marks an outcrop of the honey coloured rock that straddles the higher land  looking down on Lynn and the westward Fens and the Brecks. They are for future road trips.