Cold Plum Porridge

I've always seen East Anglia as a sort of giant Forest of Dean - somewhere you have to plan to visit as it's too far out of the way to pass on the off-chance - and as this weekend was the first opportunity I'd had of going, I was very excited -in fact, I think I was expecting it to come straight out of a fable.  As soon as we'd passed the turn off to Cambridge I started keeping an eye out for its famous flatness and enormous skies, and got quite carried away by the signpost to Swaffham (even if I couldn't quite remember the story of the pedlar in its entirety), but in fact, the small partI saw turned out to be more pleasant and attractive that anything else ... and a long bloody drive away!

Anyhow, here are some photos of Norwich.

The River Wensum

Wobbliness

More wobbliness

Wobbliness in Tombland (above and below)

Samson and Hercules in a nice mixing of mythologies

Detail, the Ethelbert Gate, built in 1316 after the original Church was burnt down during a riot in 1272.

The Cathedral exterior

The nave of the Cathedral

The Choir

The bronze 14th century Pelican lectern which escaped the Reformation and was found buried in the Bishop's Garden, apparently

Looking towards the apse

An effigy believed to be of St Felix, believed to date from 1100

The best graffiti with serifs I've ever seen ... :-)

All you that do this place pass bye

Remember death for you will dye.

As you are now even so was I

And as I am so shall you be.

Thomas Gooding here do staye

Wayting for God's judgement day.

Epitaph of Thomas Gooding, who died in 1627 and was buried vertically, apparently so that he could spring up and be first into heaven.

Glass door etched with lines from T S. Eliot's 'Burnt Norton' (Four Quartets):

‘Reach out to the silence

at the still point of the turning world.

Except for the still point

there would be no dance.

Love is itself unmoving

only the cause and end of movement

timeless.’

View through the Choir

A Dementor   An Angel

The current copper font, formerly a vessel in which toffee was made in the local Rowntrees factory

14th century roof boss in the Cloisters

Elm Hill at dusk

The Art Nouveau Royal Arcade

Labour In Vain Yard

Opie Street, formerly Gropecuntelane (1305) 

and Turpis Vicus (1333)

Norwich Castle