« South Walsham and Horning | Main | Horning again »
Wednesday August 5, 2009
North of Horning
In the spirit of a traditional self catering holiday from our youth, there have been many fry-ups and bacon sandwiches as brunch, lunch, and dinner (usually not all on the same day!). In this vein, it was our ambition to find somewhere to have fish and chips - but such places seemed hard to find; though one exists at Potter Heigham, we were not there at the right time to eat.
Last night in Horning however, we found a fish restaurant, and decided to eat there - but it was so much more than a "fish and chip" restaurant. It is a simply excellent restaurant, and you can find many other rave reviews on the web of the Bure River Cottage Restaurant ("possibly the best restaurant in East Anglia" etc). We tucked into much healthier (and tastier) fish cakes, sardines, and grilled sea bass.
The pictures show two of the "other" types of boat we saw quite frequently - one the tourist trip mock paddle steamer, and the other an old style wooden sailing boat. The tourist boat regularly "steams" up and down the river form Horning all day. But this evening as we had we moored up in a peaceful location away from any of the towns, we discovered that it also does night trips....! First we heard a terrible disco beat in the distance which gradually got louder and louder until a brilliantly lit boat came into view - it passed by, with cheering party-goers shining spotlights on us as we stood gazing open-mouthed in horror from the deck of our little craft. The whole experience was quite unbelievable. Then the noise faded into the distance - and then grew louder again as it went into the Broad adjacent to our mooring, (this is a Broad with clearly well-heeled residents on its banks, so heaven knows how they put up with it every night! ). We were treated to this cheerful serenading for well over an hour, with their passing us on the river yet again before they returned to Horning.
A Duck a Day: The Grebe
The great crested grebe is no longer an uncommon sight on any of our rivers, but is such a wonderful and extraordinary bird. Grebes are some of the oldest species of bird, and do have a rather prehistoric look about them.
This is my favourite picture - not the usual smartly turned out grebe. It is sometimes hard to catch a picture of grebes - especially little grebes - no sooner you get the glasses on them than they dive. This is the result of all that effort - a bit waterlogged.
Here with a hanger-on...
The young do not look at all like the adults, and if you did not see them together you might not easily guess.
Posted by Christina at 9:12 PM. Category: Days Out
