vango | Entries tagged with norwich

We decided that we would not use the car on Thursday night so we didn't have to get up early and take the car back to the rental agency. We enjoyed the morning with David as John had something to do. We packed up and went to the train station about 12:15 and were on the 1 o'clock train to London. It was the converse of the one that took us to Norwich. The good weather had passed us by and it was lightly raining as we set out.

In London we took a taxi to our hotel, the Mad Hatter in Southwark. I had noticed it listed before but had not really checked it out. Our room on the top floor was elegant and we enjoyed the rest. We had arranged to meet Steve Britain for dinner but we weren't sure where. He was in town for business and staying at the Holiday Inn just down the street. We met at the pub at the hotel for Dinner. They offered meat pies and fish and chips and we decided that was great.

Wondering about the name? Well, The Mad Hatter was originally a gentlemans hat factory and shop, making hats such as the famous Bowler, Topper and Boater. The Mad Hatter, of course, was a character in Lewis Carol's "Alice in Wonderland" - which hosts reference to a myth that the glue used in the making of the hat rims contained Mercury. It is said that the Mercury dispersing particles so close to the brain would tamper with the molecules of the mind and therefore send people slightly mad. Thus creating the phrase "mad as a hatter". Now you know!

A lasting tribute to London's industrial heritage, The Mad Hatter was originally a gentlemans hat factory - where the famous Bowler, Topper and Boater hats were once produced.
http://www.madhatterhotel.co.uk/

John is a footie fan following the Norwich Canaries who play just down the hill. The team is owned by Delia Smith who is a famous chef. The colors of the team are Yellow and Green so naturally the restaurant is called “Yellow” and is located in the stadium.
It wasn't a game day so the place was rather quiet. We sat next to an open door to the outside enjoying the cool of the day. Because John has a season ticket he gets a 10 percent discount at the restaurant.
It is quite a hill so we took a taxi there and back.

David and John had a surprise for us on Thursday that they would not give any info about. We loaded in the car by 11 am and drove to North Walsham. Our surprise was Davenport's Magic Kingdom.

In 1898, 16-year-old Lewis Davenport began trading in magic tricks from his home in the East End of London. He came from a large, poor family but by 1908 had opened his first shop and was already performing at increasingly prestigious music halls and theatres across Britain.
http://davenportsmagickingdom.co.uk/the-davenport-family/

This museum was established in 2013 in a warehouse in Norfolk but they don't have a lot of room for display so about 1/10th of their collection is on display. There are all kinds of magic properties and puzzles. The Cafe area is surrounded by backdrops from bygone theaters.
We arrived early enough that the man offered us the chance to see the magic early instead of waiting until noon when we had booked. So we hurried around to the “Saint George Theater” where two magicians did a stage show with lots of tricks.

After the Theater show we entered the museum exhibit. The host did a hokey bit where we all shouted magic words then the fireplace swung away to reveal the entrance. We were told about the collecting of details used to convict witches by Reginald Scot in the 1500s that is thought to be the first book explaining magic.

The host excused himself to let us wander through the artifacts until we were invited into a recreation of Lewis Davenport's Shop. in London. In the Shop a magician named Brian did close magic with coins and balls.
We had a bit of lunch before driving home.

Cinderella's Carriage is apropos of nothing but I had already process the picture so here it is.

None of us wanted to go out to eat so we ordered a pizza from a little store down the street. It was delivered by a company called Deliveroo, Deliveroo gets its name, I think, from the square foil lined backpacks to they use to carry the food as the pedal or use a motor cycle to deliver.

The second half of the show was quite different. The stage hands rolled up the carpeting in the ring and places a round stand about 6 feet tall and a curved staircase to reach the top. The music rose in volume and the girls paraded out into the ring. As they waved and swayed to the music, To stage hands removed a panel from the side of the ring and place a long pipe in the hole. On cue the pulled their lever and the stage descended into water and four fountains started spraying towards center stage.

The water spectacular part of the show began. An arched bridge was installed to the center stand and some performers walked over the that bridge to do their act. Over to the right above that entrance there was a trampoline. where three performers bounded and ran up the walls. There was a drummer with lighted drums splashing water everywhere.

For the big finally, ping pong balls floated in covering the water and reflecting the light. It made the pool appear to have a solid surface. The girls did water ballet lifting and bobbing. The four side fountains sprayed to their highest level and a plug in the center stand was removed to provide a central water spout.

This was everything that Cirque Du Soleil is in a one hundred year old theater including the water events from “O” and a bit of Blue Man Group thrown in for spice. It was an amazing show and lived up to the word spectacular.

This was the Summer Spectacular started with two women on suspended rings. The lights changed colors and the music played as they spun around on high. Ringmaster and his fool sidekick. did some shtick then the Balancing act started center stage. The foolishness persisted as a way to distract the audience while the stage hands set up for the next act. When they were being funny the there was a troupe of girl dancers waving and shaking to fill the void.

There was two guys doing a flipping act where one stands on the feet of the other. There was three Roller Skaters on a tiny stage in the center. There was a trapeze act, a hand stand girl and a hoola hoop artist before intermission.

We came to see a show at the Hippodrome Circus. which has been running now for 113 years and is the last dedicated circus building in the UK. Established in 1903 it is a venerable old circus venue and still has a performing circus. As the name implies it is a theater in the round with maybe 500 seats. But the name implies horses and this circus has no animal acts. The performance was also classic circus.

The Historic Hippodrome is Britain’s only surviving TOTAL Circus Building, built in 1903 by the legendary Circus showman George Gilbert.
Throughout the century the intimate arena has played host to an incredible variety of entertainment, from amazing water spectacles and stage variety shows to cinema and cine variety and even wartime use as a military practice shooting range!
http://www.hippodromecircus.co.uk/history/

We were seated in section Yellow Row A Seats 21-24. When the theater opened we entered down a ramp and our usher lead us around the ring to our seats in front row for the action. The usher girls were wearing t-shirts with a nod to the past. Instead of buttons and chains across there was just the suggestion of the users of the past with dots and connecting lines on a red background.

There was a stage entrance on each side with a small stage above them. The left hand stage held drummers and was a position for the Ringmaster. The right hand stage was for a later performance. There was a bar on the upper ring for all your drink needs and salesmen walking the aisles selling programs a popcorn.

Wednesday's outing was to have a surprise. We didn't have to leave until noon so the morning was slow with John going to collect our wash. We dressed and headed for Great Yarmouth on the East coast of England past the Broads which is a coastal plain of reclaimed land.

Great Yarmouth is a seaside holiday town which was last popular in the 1950s and hand been in decline ever since. However, it has been a seaside resorts since 1760. There are a lot of historic buildings lining the Marine Parade including the Royal Hotel where Charles Dickens penned “David Copperfield” in 1848-49.

It is called Yarmouth because it is at the mouth of the River Yare. For years it was a fishing village that was a source of herring. More recently, it was a supplier of oil and gas drilling equipment for the North Sea oil fields. It was a major Navel base for years but the docks became too small for the current navel vessels. It was bombed heavy in WWII which means there are few of the really old buildings left.

But it has always been a place for Norfolk residents to get away to the seaside with buildings getting tackier and tackier. There are a number of casinos with names like “the Flamingo”, Circus Circus and other rather recognizable Las Vegas names but on a much smaller scale.

We parked in a huge public long term parking lot and walked up the street for lunch enjoying fish and chips in the garden picnic area of one of the food stands. We used the Ferris wheel as a reference to find the car. The boys thought we would have to call a cab but it wasn't very far to walk.

Yarmouth was populated by a few old relics of a bygone era. Some looking better than others. The Empire theater stands empty and forlorn having lost a few letters the stone face now just says “The Empi.” The Windmill theater has the blue medallion indicating its historic status and has survived by being converted to an indoor miniature golf course and the Hollywood theater is now a cinema. The Winter Gardens is vacant but would have been a wonder in the past as an all glass building on the pier to enjoy winter presentations in a green house environment.

We hurried home to get in before 6pm. John and David live near the football field and there was a game on Tuesday night. It was best to be off the street so they planned dinner in which was roasted chicken and sausages with some potatoes from their garden.

The adventure was to visit Bressingham Steam and Garden Center. David had fail to locate a map to aid our travels but with a push of a few buttons I turned on the Volkswagon's navigation system and we were off to Bressingham.

Bressingham is a small wide spot in the road right near Diss. After a flurry of Diss and Dat jokes we made our way to Ipswitch road and turned west towards Diss. The Navigation system had a mental breakdown and started directing us in circles and we had to ask at the pub.
Bressingham Garden Center is a modern plant store housed in one of the modern tent buildings. It took us a bit of roaming but we found the restaurant and had something to eat. The staff was surly and really just wanted to go home because they had just served a coach full of old people but we got something to eat.

Then it was on to the Steam Train Museum.right next door. The Bressingham train museum and gardens was a product of a bygone era. It was built around the fields of Alan Bloom who is a famous Horticulturist and Steam Train Enthusiast.

David was surprised that it wasn't like he remembered because everything in the past was much bigger. When John pointed out that David's memory was distorted because David, himself, was mush smaller, he was reminded that David's only other visit was when he was 30 years old.
We rode two of the three steam trains through the gardens. The bigger of the two (2 foot gauge) would have once passed fields of rose bed but with the death of Mr. Bloom all of that had changed. The commercial nursery ceased trading in 2011 and the land has been returned to nature. The smaller train went around the perimeter of a fine garden.

We also rode the “Galloper” which is another name for the Carousel. It was a magnificent small one. Ron rode in the Dragon bench while John mounted a sturdy white seed and I chose the two seater Chicken. David chose an ostrich.

The three-abreast Gallopers are Bressingham's centre piece. It is one of the finest to be seen anywhere. Built by Savages of Kings Lynn in 1897 and owned and operated by the Thurston family of Norfolk until 1934, the Gallopers later operated at Whitley Bay and ended up in Scotland before finding a home at Bressingham. The engine was originally built by Tidmans of Norwich but has been completely rebuilt at Bressingham. The organ - a Bruder-built, 48 keyless Chiappa - accompanies the Gallopers as they reach up to six revolutions per minute and swing out some 15 degrees.
http://www.bressingham.co.uk/explore/gallopers.aspx

We returned home and had a nap and supper in. There was to be a huge football match that evening and John didn't want to be on the road during the lead up to the game because of traffic.

John and David have a Fiat 500 which was far too small to haul the four of us around so I hired a car for three days. I was to pick it up at 9:30 on Tuesday but when 9:30 rolled around we were far from ready. John had taken our clothes to a laundry down the street When I couldn't find my wallet John and I walked down to find that the place was far more efficient than we thought. The load was already in the dryer and they had already located one of the credit cards that had been washed when we walked in the door. The rest of the wallet was there with freshly laundered 10 pound notes but most importantly my two credit cards and my drivers license.

David and I took a cab to the car hire place at around noon to pick up the car. The car hire and the cab company were across the street from each other. We picked up a shiny gray Volkswagon Golf. I took David along to add him as a driver on the rental but we surprised to learn that he had never actually driven an automatic. I drove by to their house with only one bobble as I got used to the “Correct” side of the road. David decided as we parked that he would try driving it first by turning it around in the driveway. Thirty minutes later we had conquered how to release the Automatic Parking break with the aid of the instruction manual and took a tea break to prepare for our afternoon adventure that was now a few hours late.
It is very disconcerting to drive this ecological friendly car because when you are stopped it shuts down the engine. As soon as you tap the accelerator it restarts the engine and goes on. It is forever having to restart itself.

Monday evening the took us to a steak house called Middleton;'s in the center of the city. The building started life as a warehouse but was converted to a Baptist meeting house and chapel. The steaks were superb. The long day caught up with us and we faded.

Their house is modest from the outside but the inside is really lively reflecting an artist's soul. The front hall is all framed mirrors of different sizes and shapes. The front office is all map pages pasted on the diagonal. The dining room is all cartoon hands and the Kitchen has every cabinet door and drawer with a different face. The sitting room has rich jungle patterned wall paper the connects it to the outside view of the garden from the French Doors.

It is a two bed room, two bath room house but it cold easily be a four bedroom home and the crest of Carrow Hill. The back garden slopes down the hill away from the building and offers a quiet place to enjoy the day.

David and John are a delight to be around because they are so well read and so well traveled. No cultural reference gets past them. We like to visit and share time with them. We shared our travel stories and caught up with their adventures.

We were in Norwich to see our old friends David and John. We have known them for 25 years and are a delight. David met us at the station wearing his Johnson Kansas t-shirt from his visit to Kansas. He shepherded us by taxi to their house where we were greeted by John in his Johnson t-shirt as well.
David is an artist and their home reflects his style. With this location they have given up their pied de terre in London and their seaside home in Cromer for a huge cottage in Norwich next to part of the old city walls. Just next door is one of the fortification towers and the remaining part of the wall.

For those who want to sound English, the name of the town isn't pronounced “NOR witch” but “NAR-itch.” It is located in East Anglia on the River Wensum and at one time it was the second largest city in England after London. Today, a little over 130,000 Norvicians live in the city.
Norfolk and Norwich were where the warrior princess Boudica around AD 60.
David tells me that lovers used to write Norwich on the back of their love letters like the phrase SWAK. In this case it means “Nickers off ready when I come Home.”