Blickling Hall and Felbrigg Hall

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A National Trust sort of day today and two beauties on our doorstep.

First stop Blickling Hall, an early 1600 mansion of beautiful proportions and balance.
The lady in the car park was delighted to see us as she had a tiny weeny parking spot just waiting for a Smart Arse like ours. She said they are super busy at the moment and yesterday they had to close the carpark as it was full.
This is of course because there are so many people holidaying in England because of Covid who would normally be abroad. Oddly that has nothing to do with why Bob and I are most unusually visiting Norfolk and in August. We are here because we took the opportunity to meet up with daughter Jenny and family while they were holidaying in Suffolk last week and thought as we were over this side of the country we might as well extend to Norfolk as well.

We ‘did’ the gardens of Blickling Hall first and they are delightful as we generally find walled gardens to be. The dahlia border was exceptional and my camera agreed. I do enjoy checking if I can identify all the flowering plants and usually can but there are occasional ones I don’t know which makes garden visiting like this all the more interesting.

As well as the walled gardens to one side of the house there is a lovely Parterred area to the other side with more wonderfully colourful floral beds. Lovely.

Next stop was the café as the drizzly rain had turned into something a bit wetter. Had to queue a few minutes because it was so busy. Then a visit to the house was a must. The interior is exceptional with all the rooms we saw fully and beautifully furnished, all original house content. Tapestries, portrait paintings, leather painting, wonderfully ornate wood carving, painted ceilings and moulded ceilings and some rather lovely stained glass windows too. Absolutely super and so well worth the visit.

Outside the front aspect of the house is fantastic with a wing out to the front on either side with wonderful tall chimneys and again a lovely balance. The buildings to the side we presumed to be stable and office buildings.

So that was Blickling and time was pressing as the National Trust properties round here seem to shut at 4 and it was already 3. Just time to whizz along to Felbrigg Hall and only just in time to enter the walled garden as the sign at the gate said ‘closed’ - but when I asked really nicely they let us in J.
The walled garden was superb with such exuberant and vibrant planting throughout. A dove cote at the back provided a lovely backdrop and the white doves flitting round the gardens a diversion. Absolutely stunned by these gardens and a shame we had to visit pretty well on the run but we had less than 30 minutes before the gates to them closed.

We just had time to grab an icecream in the stable yard café to the house and no chance of visiting the house as that was firmly closed. Another early 1600 house, again mainly red brick and with a really well balanced appeal.

Back to Smart Arse to find a most apologetic note on the windscreen. Someone had tapped the back end (tricky as to be honest the car is so small it has the smallest bottom you have ever seen on a car J). No harm done, just a little scratch to the paintwork which Bob will polish out and the offending driver sounded incredibly relieved when Bob phoned to say there was no problem. He also though thanked her for leaving the note.

Took a detour via Cromer on the way back to the campsite and hit a traffic jam in the town centre so took the road going the other way and found ourselves on the coast road heading West up the hill. At the top was a carpark so we found a spot and walked down into the town. I had thought that Cromer was just a smaller Yarmouth but absolutely not. Quite a pleasant seaside town though it was absolutely heaving with visitors and we have never seen so many fish and chips consumed in such a small area.

We didn’t go right down to the seafront as we had already walked quite far enough for the day but did note that the beach stretches for miles and even has quite a lot of sand down past the shingle top. There is also a pier which always makes any seaside town look good.

Back up the hill, we stopped to chat to the local goats who keep the grassy bank in trim before returning to Smart Arse who said it was smarting a bit from its earlier scratch so I promised a rub with Savlon (but it had to make do with a scourer and Fairy Liquid later ) and back to the motorhome.

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