Norfolk

We only had one day to go sightseeing in Norfolk, and much of that was allocated to looking at the villages in which Andy's ancestors had lived. We did, however, go to the seaside (Cromer) for lunch, as Cromer crab had been recommended (for Andy - I don't eat seafood). After a Cromer crab panini for Andy and a slice of Gala pie (a kind of pork pie with a hard boiled egg inside) for me, he decided he was still hungry.  So when we walked past a vendor of cockles, mussels,  prawns, etc, he decided to have some cockles. He said that he thought he used to have them as a child, and would like some again. He started eating his cup full of little molluscs, and seemed to be enjoying them, but after a while (because the cup seemed to contain an infinite amount of cockles, like some magical, constantly refilling cup) he started feeling he'd had more than enough, and thought that it may have been winkles, not cockles, he'd had in his youth. The remainder of the afternoon he spent worrying that they might have been "off", and thinking that he might feel a bit off himself, but I think the reality was simply that it was too much of an unfamiliar food.

Cromer pier

The villages (and more importantly,  the churches and churchyards) we visited were Wood Dalling, Heydon, Saxthorpe, Corpusty and Fakenham.  In none of them could I find any gravestones for his family members - no doubt they were too poor to have been able to afford headstones. But even if there had been any in Fakenham I would have been out of luck. It is one of those places where the pesky headstones have all been removed to make space for people to use for leisure. A small number of them have been arranged against one boundary wall, but none of them included any names of interest. I also found a municipal cemetery in Fakenham,  but all the graves in it appeared to be too recent to be of interest.

Headstones stacked against the wall covered in ivy

Headstones used as a bench support

Heydon was our favourite of the villages. It was a glorious day and the only thing that was missing was a game of cricket being played on the village green. It was so picturesque that Andy kept expecting a dead body and Inspector Barnaby to turn up!

Tea-shop in Heydon

Heydon pub