Tag Archives: Cromer

Return to Cromer

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Cromer Pier – Julia took it with her phone. Annoyingly it is better than the shot I took when we last visited, and I used a camera.

Julia has returned from her jolly to Norfolk. She reports that the Fish and Chip Restaurant where we dined is still there but has dialled itself back to be a top-class purveyor of ordinary fish and chips. It was more complicated when we dined there and though it was a great place to eat, we felt the experience of eating less common fish (she had some form of dogfish and I had hake) left something to be desired. There is a reason why cod and haddock are popular and the others are rarely seen. Fish and Chips at Cromer

Cromer – on our last visit

I said in my original post that Julia said she would go back again. I said I probably wouldn’t. Five years later (five years – where does the time go?) we both did what we said.

I notice that I also referred to the hake as tasting very fishy. I was being polite. It gets great write-ups in fish recipe sites for having a superior flavor to cod but this wasn’t my experience. It might have been a bad bit of fish, as I remember it as verging on unpleasant. I suppose I would see it differently if I had hake that needed selling.

The top picture is from No 1 Son. Julia put it on her Facebook page and several people wrote in to say it was awesome to see her in this seagoing gear. Others realised she was just sticking her head through a hole in a board. This goes some way to confirm my suspicions about the intelligence of many Facebook users.

They went round the Henry Blogg Museum while they were there. That was what led to Julia sticking her head though the board (she can’t resist them, I have several others like this somewhere) plus the stained glass window shot.

Although Henry Blogg is the famous one, there were many heroic lifeboatmen. Mainly they were modest men who performed acts of great gallantry on dark nights in raging seas, sometimes after rowing for hours to get there. If they’d have done it in daylight with drums and flags they would be a lot better known. maybe somebody should write a blog post on the subject.

 

Cromer Pier

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We manged to find a parking space within striking distance of the pier this time, though I decided not to go all the way down the ramp to the pier. Downhill walking isn’t good for bad knees – I know this from past experience. And then there would have been the problem of getting back up to the top.

I like Cromer, but I do think they could have built the pier in a more convenient place. Next to a car park, for instance. (This, if I’d known, was to become something of a motif over the next few days).

About 500 yards from the end of the pier a very strange shipwreck took place on 9th August 1888 when the paddle steamer Victoria  hit a church tower. Yes, that’s right, a ship sank after hitting a church tower. It actually wedged itself on the tower of the lost village of Shipden – originally lost to the sea in the late 13th century. Even then, it didn’t actually sink until they used dynamite to remove the tower and blew a hole in the bottom of the steamer.

That has little to do with the pier, but it’s such a great piece of trivia I felt you’d excuse me.

There have been a number of piers in Cromer. The first one known was mentioned in a document of 1390. Several have been destroyed – one by a storm and one by a ship. The current one was opened in 1902.

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Cromer Pier – a fine looking pier

It’s a fine looking pier, even from a distance, and a tribute to the owners (North Norfolk District Council) and the amount of work they have done to keep it up to standard. It’s recently been cut in half by a drifting barge (1993) and damaged by a storm surge in 2013.  Other people obviously like it too, it’s been Pier of the Year in 2000 and 2015.

It claims to be “One of only five UK seaside pier’s with a full working, flourishing theatre and home to the only end of pier show of it’s kind in the World!”.  I don’t want to get into an argument about it, as I don’t have any evidence one way or the other, or know what the definition of an end of the pier show is. I’m also suspicious about anything using the words “of it’s kind”.

Apart from the obvious problem of weasel words being used by a marketing team there’s the problem of apostrophe abuse. If they can get their apostrophes wrong, what else can you get wrong?

Even without the pier Cromer would be an interesting place. This is the Hotel de Paris. After photographing the pier all I needed to do was turn round and take this picture.

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Hotel de Paris – Cromer

It was originally opened in 1830 by Pierre le Françoise, who had come to England as a child when his family fled the revolution in France.  It was successful and several notable people stayed – including Edward VII and Oscar Wilde (though probably not together).

I looked it up on the Internet – prices seem quite reasonable. We may be back.

 

 

Full Speed Ahead, and Damn the Cholesterol!

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The first life-threatening dietary experience of the holiday was fish and chips in Sheringham. We started the day with bran flakes in the hotel room and, after a long, hot walk round Strumpshaw Fen decided it was time to head off in search of a pier.

I think it’s time to reveal that we have set ourselves the target of visiting every pleasure pier on mainland Britain. This may expand to encompass Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Isle of Wight, but then again, it may not. There are about 65 of them and based on the events of this week I may run out of cash and stamina before I see them all.

We tried Cromer pier, but couldn’t find anywhere to park. They seem to have obtained a large supply of No Entry signs since last time we visited, about 15 years ago. What with the one way system and the road works we tried three different ways to get round and failed each time. Eventually, after a seven point turn in a narrow street, I broke the cycle and parked behind the church, only to find out that all the space was reserved for disabled drivers and taxis. One of the reasons I hadn’t noticed this before parking was that the painted signs were faded. The other was that there were no disabled drivers or taxis using the spaces. This was to become a familiar pattern of the holiday.

That effectively broke my spirit and I decided to call it a day and head for Sheringham. You can park in Sheringham, next to the station with a preserved steam railway and a Victorian Penfold letter box (originally in use 1866-79). They seem rather more welcoming in Sheringham.

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We eventually ended up in the Sheringham Trawler, a bright and cheery fish and chip restaurant. I was going to link to an information site – visitsheringham.co.uk – but they have a notice on the page telling me not to link to them without permission. While I can understand them having a problem with me stealing content I’m not sure why it’s a problem for me to link to them. They are, after all, a site that you would think would want exposure for Sheringham.

The establishment was, as I said, bright and cheery. They have pictures of local scenes on the walls and a programme of local events in the menu. The staff were great and the menu was good, though as long as they have haddock and chips with mushy peas all menus are good for me.

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When the meal arrived it lived up to our hopes, being very tasty, generous in the portion department ans accompanied by a good-sized lemon wedge and a plastic container of tartare sauce. I suppose we shouldn’t be using so much plastic but that and the fact that they don’t tell you where the fish comes from, were the only two negative points that I can think of.

The batter was light and crisp too, which I forgot to mention earlier.

Another nice touch was the use of beef dripping for frying. It’s supposed to be healthier than more fashionable fats and why just upset vegetarians when you can also offend pescatarians and Hindus too.

I have a low opinion of pescatarians, so this is a plus point.