Day 7 - Sunday 05 March - Blickling, Whitwell and Kurdiston

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Today was a quiet day for us - it is Sunday and we were thinking we didn’t want to intrude on any church services. We set off for Blickling - the parish church where my 7G grandparents were married in 1694 (and then buried in 1701 & 1703], and another buried in 1762. These were more of my nana Robinson’s family, the Fullers. The church was beautiful inside, and whilst remodelled in the last century or two, it still has the original church as part of its fabric. There were memorials to nobility, including Ann Boleyn, and a marquis who had a most elaborate memorial with angel statues, but he’s not buried there. The headstones were hard to read and we found no Fullers.
next door to the church was the Blickling Estate, an impressive Jacobean house built on the remains of a home owned by the Boleyn family, and the site of Ann Boleyn’s birth. The house is not quite up and running for the National Trust as the tourist season hasn’t quite kicked off yet.
after that church we decided to skip the planned Aylsham church as, being a larger town it’s more likely to be having services, and it only had a marriage in it. Instead, we continued on to the Whitwell and Reepham Heritage Railway. It was lunchtime so we went straight to their cafe, and ordered the Sunday Roast for lunch, wonderful roast beef with a Yorkshire Pud, with roast potatoes and other veg. It was lovely.
When we’d finished our lunch we went outside and purchased tickets for the steam train ride - it was fun. They had an extensive railway system that has long been closed and turned in to a bridle path/footpath. The heritage group has the sidings but would like access to put tracks on the original path.
After a post-ride Magnum we continued our drive through Kurdiston, an area that would have been a very isolated agricultural area when my 3G grandmother died rhere in 1886.
we then returned to our cottage and our waiting Tesco pizza.

I am loving seeing all of these villages, the names of which I have been entering on my computer for decades!

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