Today I went for a drive, my intention was to go to see Orford Ness. First stop was Orford Castle, which is a compact castle, it looks quite small from outside but is somewhat more extensive from the inside, with lots of clever little rooms tucked into the walls. It seems to have been well documented too, with records remaining from the initial building of the keep through to modern alterations.
Sadly Sizewell was shrouded behind a mist of rain, but the (alleged by English Heritage, I can’t find any info on transmitter gallery, but that might be because I don’t really know what I’m looking for) World Service transmitters were close enough to be visible. First Droitwich, now this. I assure you I’m not deliberately touring famous antennae of the UK.
Next stop, Snape Maltings. This is a converted barley malting complex. It now houses a series of shops and art groups. I could tell, from the other people in the cafe, that I wasn’t their normal kind of customer, everyone else seemed to be either part of a retired couple or a family of the sorts of people who wouldn’t consider shopping at somewhere as downmarket as Waitrose.
The food section stood out as far more interesting that the rest of the things on offer, indeed I couldn’t resist getting a pot of chilli jam, which seems like its going to be all wrong in exactly the right sorts of ways, but it might just be wrong.
They have a number of statues and art works in the gardens, too, which I imagine could be great on a less miserable day, things hiding in the reed beds, violins made of bees, all kinds of oddness.
And there was a small collection of old Riley cars [0] along with one poor moggy traveller looking very out of place amongst them. I was amused by the cunning design of temperature gauge, placed atop the radiator, where we now see the leaping jaguar or the silver lady.
Further up the coast and my final stop for the day is in Aldeburgh, I park by the scallop and walk down the beach to the sea. I was hoping there’d be good skimming stones, but by the time I got to where the water was lapping it was just sandy, and it wasn’t so much fun having to run up and down the beach collecting stones. So I walked south, along the line between water and land. You can see how the emptiness would inspire – but I was just revelling in not having to worry about anything but not getting too much salty water in my boots.
After a while of being stuck in my own little world I ascended back into the town, where everything looked dreadfully familiar. I’d been here before. It must have been while I was living in Northampton because I was driving the Peugeot, there were a group of us Norwich lot went camping in this area. I don’t remember much about the weekend, there was a bunny field which wasn’t much fun to drive across, and a pub that didn’t like us “city folk” and decided we were stealing their glasses when actually we were just drinking out of them, and setting up camp on ex-military land (well, we *hoped* it was ‘ex’) and now, this town.
The odd thing about the place was that there were hardly any high street brand names there, sure all the banks were chains and the Co-op had moved in where the post office used to be but everything else was local. I found a weird little cafe which looked like a small kiosk style coffee takeaway but if you snuck around the back of the counter there was a huge room in the back with tables (should I be worried that as soon as I arrived they all emptied?). Then it was time for a walk back to the scallop in the rain, by which point I’d had enough and decided it was home-time.
And, for some reason, on the way back I noticed that one of the big estates in the area was having a “Quilt show”. About which I wasn’t quite curious enough to turn around and find out.
[0] I notice from the Riley Motor Club that they have a meeting at the Fakenham steam museum next weekend. And that that museum contains the fourth largest cinema organ in Europe. And that its not far from Cambridge. Anyone up for it?