Roemin abit

We are leaving Norfolk this morning and heading home via Stamford after a really nice few days in and around Holt. Travelled as far as Wisbech before trying to find somewhere for a short comfort break. After driving around the centre several times without success Rosemary spotted a NT house on the banks of the Nene. Peckover House was built by a Quaker banking family and has a hidden 2 acre walled garden full of flowers and fruit trees. We did not have time to look around the Georgian house but had a coffee and snack in the garden tea room before heading for Stamford. We called to see Margaret and Antony after a quick shop at Waitrose and finally arrived home at 7:15 after a long 140 mile drive. Just too late to receive the Ocado delivery but fortunately Katherine was at home to do the honours.

  Holt is associated with owls, apparently, so we are doing the Owl trail today to find out what its all about. The 23 point circular tour of the Georgian town highlighted all of the architectural features of the old buildings with some interesting historical anecdotes. There are lots of yards with quaint independent shops making it a browsers paradise. Lovely coffee stops and all the stuff you never knew you wanted. Rosemary bought a denim jackets for instance. Not sure what owls have got to do with it though. It was sunny and warm again, like it has been all week, so we had a Rocky Bottom prawn picnic in our garden back at the Lawns Rooms. It's Thai night in the hotel, so we are booked in for dinner tonight. We had cocktails in the restaurant first then Rosemary had the prawn sizzler and I had prawn green curry. 

We took the car out today to look around the surrounding pretty villages and find some seafood. However the highlight of the day was a ride on the  carousel at the Thursford Collection where there are lots of traction engines and fairground organs. We did find some dressed crab at Blakeney and giant prawns at Rocky Bottom to eat back in Holt. We also had an afternoon tea of grilled Calamari and Crab Avocado at Rocky Bottom restaurant. Earlier we bought some freshly milled muesli and bread making flour from the water mill at nearby Letheringsett. We also managed to fit in a short coffee break at the NWT Cley Marshes visitor centre with all the twitchers. 

 We had breakfast with our neighbours from no 29 next door who we discovered live in Sharnford not 5 miles from Croft, what a small world. Then after browsing around the pretty Georgian town we took the no 9 bus to Sheringham for the afternoon. Very busy as you would expect in the school holidays. The crab sandwich shack is now an ice cream shack, so we had to resort to some calamari and chicken gougons in a local pub. We shopped for some snacky stuff in the huge deli on the market place and picnicked on our tables back at the Lawns on a nice sunny evening.

Today we are going for a 5 day break in the car at Holt to visit some places on the north Norfolk coast and call in Stamford on the way back. We had a straightforward journey to Holt using the A47 route and arrived at The Feathers hotel at 4:00 pm where we had been assigned garden room 30 in the Lawns Rooms hotel annex just up the road. We settled in and decided to have the Sunday carvery at 7:00 so that we could watch the ladies Eurocup final first in our room. It went to extra time and penalties so we had to watch them win the championship in the Feathers bar while we were finishing our meal.