Cromer Holiday Part 1



Lethal staris!

Remember those stairs I was telling you about, the ones at the cottage I’d booked for a holiday, well I have to eat my words….they got me!  They were positively dangerous.  Getting the suitcase up them was slow and scary (hubby slid the case down at the end of the holiday with him backing down the staircase!).  Anyway, I’d been so careful on the stairs and then one morning I lost my footing on the turn (the worst part) and slid down on my bum.  I was quite shaken and had to sit down for a bit to recover.  I expected to find bruises down my right arm, side and back but luckily it only feels bruised.  I did shout out and expected hubby to come to my aid.  He didn’t.  When I asked him later he just said ‘I thought I heard something’, well, thanks!

Lounge-cum-dining area

And now to the holiday.  Things were looking good but when we got to Kings Cross for the train I realised I’d read the wrong time and we’d just missed it!  We didn’t have long to wait for the next train but of course we missed all the other connections (there were two changes) and we ended up waiting nearly an hour at Peterborough and another 45 minutes at Norwich!  We were due to be picked up at Cromer station by the owners of the cottage but I had to ring them to say we would be an hour late and not to wait.  We made our own way there from the station and it wasn’t a long walk.  We finally arrived about 5.45pm.  The weather for travelling was great – very warm and sunny.  Just a pity we stuck in trains!  The sky at Cromer looked lovely.

Kitchen

The cottage was rather dark……it had a long narrow room, the front door opened on to the lounge, there was a dining area behind and behind that was the kitchen and beyond that the bathroom.  There was no front room window (door with long side window, all frosted, was it).  So we had to have the light on most of the time as it was so dark inside, though the kitchen was light, as was the bathroom.  There were two bedrooms up those lovely stairs.  The front one was large overlooking the street, but hubby wanted to sleep in the back, which was smaller but I think the right choice because it got noisy at night.  I forgot to say that the cottages (three altogether) were sandwiched between a shop and amusement arcades!  However, the street was just off the Esplanade and if you stuck your head close to the front bedroom window and turned it left you could just see the sea! There was a tiny courtyard garden which I did sit in twice.

The kitchen was well equipped but I couldn’t understand the microwave.  The instructions were no use.  I used the fast cook button and upped the time by 30secs to get the time I wanted.  I much prefer our own cheap and cheerful basic model.  The cottage itself was well equipped – tons of videos but the TV was a small portable one and at times I felt I was going blind!  Ours looked like a cinema screen when we got home!  On the hi-fi only the radio worked and only picked up two stations, one was Norfolk’s local which panned in and out of stereo but played good music.  There was a stack of tourist leaflets and timetables but loads were out of date.  Too much was overwhelming.  If I’d had my way I would have ditched most of them and updated them once a year.  The maps and books were great though and there were load of paperback books.  Once I finished the book I took with me I was desperate for another book so I looked for one there.  I came across Fear The Worse by Linwood Barclay.  Anyone heard of him?  I was over half way through it when we left…….I own up…I took the book with me!  It’s great, a good fast-paced thriller.  I may read more of his after this.

Now to the holiday itself.  The first evening after a quick trip to Budgens and dinner, we had a bit of a wander round.  However it was dark by then so we went along by the seafront where there were some pretty lights.  When we came to the end of the lights it was so dark you couldn’t see where you were going so I said lets go back.  I took a few night shots after hubby sorted out my camera (the battery compartment hadn’t shut properly and had got jammed).  We then went back to our cottage to watch Doctor Who on TV and contemplate the week to come.

(Part 2 to follow shortly)