Horsey Walk and Picnic

When Laura was told she wouldn't be allowed back into the lab to do her PhD experiments any time soon, she decided to go and stay with Lawrence in Norwich for a bit. Well that's not far, so we arranged to meet for a walk and a picnic. I thought it might be nice to meet at the coast, so chose Horsey Windpump as I had a walk  description for a short walk there from my ring-bound AA book "Walks and Tours of Great Britain" dating from 1996. I checked with the National Trust website and found the car-park would be open, but not the facilities. That would do us, so we arranged to meet there at about 11am today.

We arrived first and had a look around the National Trust site, including visiting the mere viewpoint before Laura and Lawrence arrived. It was great to see them. We had only seen Laura online since the 1st of January.

We decided to do our walk first before the picnic. This was our route.

It was a perfect day for walking - not too hot and the breeze when we reached the beach wasn't too strong. I said that, if we were lucky, we might see a few seals. There were dozens of them in the water close to the shore.

Here are a few of my photos.

The windpump wasn't open to climb. Maybe another time.

Heading towards the mere viewpoint we passed several moored boats.

This one had just entered the mere.

The tearoom has a line showing where sea-level is.

The little garden and pond was a nice place to sit while we waited. I liked the rose campions. We used to have some in our garden in Berkshire before we moved to Suffolk nearly 23 years ago

Hooray. Here is Laura!

On our way to the beach we had a good chance to chat with Laura and Lawrence.

I took a little detour to see the pub. Shame it wasn't open.

As we neared the beach we found lots of marsh orchids.

There were plenty of seals in the water, many of them quite close to the shore.

It is a lovely sandy beach and there weren't many people on it until we neared Horsey Gap.

We spent some time just watching the seals and trying to photograph them.

We left the beach at Horsey Gap and headed for Horsey Corner before taking the path to the village church.

On the way we had a view of the ruins of Brograve Mill.

All Saints Church dates from the 11th century and has a round tower with an octagonal top.

A stained glass window from 1890 commemorates an artist by the name of Catherine Ursula Rising.

Back at the windpump we chose this bench and table for our picnic.

Powered by tea - propelled by cake, says the inscription on the bench.

After lunch we still had time for a short further walk along the side of the mere. This banana boat overtook us.

A last view as we headed back  before we reluctantly said our goodbyes and headed our separate ways.

But we would be seeing Laura and Lawrence later again on the family weekly Zoom quiz. And we will meet again for a picnic next weekend, I think.

You can see more details of our route here on MapMyWalk and more of my photos (including plenty more of the windpump and seals) here on Flickr