The annual family holiday is due this year at Thorpeness in Suffolk, which by all accounts is a strange place. We could get into the rental at 16:00 so there was no rush to leave the house, the plan was to stop at the national Trust property Anglesey Abbey over near Cambridge. We were away at 11:15 and after a pretty uneventful journey via mainly motorway and dual carriage way we arrived at the abbey at 12:00.
Anglesey Abbey was mediaeval priory which was eventually owned by Lord Fairhaven who turns it into a family home. He was find of Dahlias and they feature a lot around the house and grounds. There is also an annual Dahlia festival featuring the best Dahlias you’re ever likely to see on one place.
We walked around the grounds then had a look at the working mill, followed by the main house and then some other of the grounds before having lunch in the visitors centre. The house was one or the more interesting houses in that the contents were relatively modern compared to other National Trust properties. There were also quite a few paintings mainly of Windsor castle. Lord Fairhaven seemed to be a collector of things I noted pictures of birds, jewellery crosses, paintings of Windsor castle, and Chinese stone carvings. After lunch we headed back on the road to the twilight zone that is Thorpeness.
We took the tourist route which is a pleasant drive but not suitable for the VW cruise control as there are too many bends and you have to keep adjusting the speed and it is not so bad when you have some one to follow as when they break so does the Golf, but the road was very quiet so no one to follow.
When we got to Thorpeneas it took a tour of the village MD a mobile phone call to find the rental cottage which was very nice. Plenty of rooms down stairs and more than one TV to save any arguments over which channel to watch. WiFi was soon found and connected to but the speed was a bit rural at 1.6mb down and 1.2mb up.
Rooms were soon allocated, bags unpacked, food stored away and we could begin to relax. A short walk via the beach and the shallow boating lake was in order. It became clear that Thorpeness was a weird place a subject that I will entire to in a later blog entry. By the time we got back it was time to eat. We had come prepared with Waitrose prepared salads so it took no time at all to take the lids off of the products and get stuck in. We also bought a selection of cheeses amongst which was a wedge of Bleu D’Affinois my favourite new cheese, and it was the only one that was completely demolished.
After a game of Scrabble I went to bed looking forward to a walk on Sunday.