The Poppy Line from Sheringham

Ickworth Hall NT Park view
Ickworth Hall NT Park view

We were up at a reasonable 08:00, and had some toast and coffee for breakfast, then lounged about till 10:00, then headed out the plan was to go to Cromer. We took the A149 which follows the coast al the way round to Kings Lynn.

When we got to Cromer we had a change of heart and decided to go to the the Poppy Line, a steam train line, at Sheringham. Being just a little bit further down the coast, it did not take us long to get there, and park up. We paid £5 for a days parking. We went to the ticket office and bought tickets for the trains, the way it works is once you have the tickets you can jump on and off the tran all day for £16. The next steam train was in a hour so we had a look around Sheringham and stopped for a coffee, before waiting on platform one for the train to arrive.

The train was full but not packed, everyone got a seat. They were having a Thomas the tank engine weekend so all of the engines had plastic faces attached to them, which did It make for good photo’s. There is a stop at Weybourne and it was where the main Thomas stuff was going on we took one look and decided to stay on the train till Holt.

At Holt station there is a bus stop, and one was due in less than 20 minutes, so we thought we would wait for be bus as it is about a mile and a half into town, however after about 30 minutes there was no bus, and we had a dilemma we needed to get back in time to get to a supermarket for our planned evening meal, so we ended up heading back to the station and got a diesel train back to Sheringham.

Boats near Sheringham

On the way back we stopped off at the North Walsham Waitrose, and picked up some supplies for dinner. We dumped the food back at the hut then headed out for a walk on the beach at Sea Palling, which is a strange place. There is a concrete ramp leading to the beach between the sand dunes, the local fisher men use it to launch their boats. Once over the dunes there is some break waters out a sea they clearly have an erosion issue, there were some serious boulders piled up for a mile or two out at sea with a gap every hundred or so yards. As we walked down the beach we spotted Sandwich and Little tern.

We returned to he car park by heading in land over the dunes then following a track parallel to the beach. Along the track there were quite a few wooden shacks of varying sophistication many of them with water, electricity and phones, I even think they had off mains sewage.

Back at the main area I dropped in to the amusement arcade, and changed a fiver for some 10 pence pieces. The arcade had a strange system of tickets wins prizes, every time you had a go on a machine you would get tickets and if you actually won you got even more. I got two 75 ticket wins on a roulette style game. You take your tickets to a machine where you feed them in and they get counted and you are issued with a receipt if the count. I had enough for a pen so I went to the counter and showed my tickets and said could I have a pen any pen. There was one confusion the lad thought I wanted to borrow a pen, but eventually were on the same wavelength. I followed him over to the cabinets and pointed to the only decent looking pen. He had trouble finding the pen I wanted so I settled for two sets of highlighter pens.

Back at the hut we lounged around again (well we are on holiday) then had salad and anti-pasta for dinner. We followed that up with a game of knock out whist, which I won. Then we settled down in from of the telly to watch the antiques roadshow, rock n roll, followed by the last episode of the village, and great series on BBC1.