Saturday - touring Norwich

Today we met up with Richard and Mary at her house and headed into Norwich to go to the castle and cathedral. Norwich used to be the second largest city in England after London. It was the hub of the farm land in the area and Richard says he remembers when animals were still driven directly into town to be bought and sold. Norwich the city is actually quite large; but the Norwich castle is bigger. It sits in the center and high above everything else. Its a traditional Norman keep so its square and tall. You have to walk up one of the earthworks (through the old moat) to get up to the bridge to go inside.

The castle looks much more impressive than Castle Rising because in the Victorian era it was remodeled on the outside to preserve it. It looks like new! Richard had been to the castle but it had been about 35 years ago and the inside has been totally remodeled since then. The main floor of the great hall collapsed just like at Castle Rising but its been kept up better. When the inner floors fell, they were covered with a wooden floor. The floor would have been lower than it is now but you can still see how the storage area (lower level) was rough cut and undecorated. At about the level that the great hall would have been, a gallery (balcony) has been built all the way around. You can see how the hall (upper level) was more polished and finished off because that's where the king would have been.

Around the main keep the other castle areas have been converted into galleries. There were several different exhibits including a 60's exhibit with some gorgeous photographs of all kinds of rock royalty. There were several traditional art galleries with work from local painters, a small Egyptian exhibit and an exhibit on china made from the local and famous Lowestoft Porcelein shop. There was a huge exhibit on Boudica and the Iceni, native people of Roman era. It was quite interesting and there were a bunch of artifacts found locally. That exhibit continued up into an Anglo-Saxon exhibit including the British-Romans left behind, native tribes and invading Danish. It was all fascinating! There were great video clips as well, including one on King and Saint Edmund, called Edmund the Martyr.

The dungeon section was closed so we left the castle to walk around the grounds a little bit before walking over to Norwich Cathedral. On the way we stopped to eat at the Slug & Lettuce, a great restaurant with good food. As we were walking we passed a game shop that had people dressed up as Storm Troopers, Rebel Fights, Darth Vader and Chewbacca from Star Wars. It was quite surreal to be in a town hundreds of years old and see them standing in the street!

The Cathedral was huge! The spire is the second largest in all of England and was a later extension on the earlier Norman building. The Cathedral, like many in England, has had many exciting times in its 900 years including several riots and occupations. The private school that shares the grounds and was having their "end of term speeches" which is similar to graduation. They were in the Cathedral and there must have been hundreds of people in there. All the volunteers at the church were quite miffed that the visitors couldn't go into the church until the ceremony was done. We had some time so we walked around the cloister and marvel at the bosses in the ceiling. Bosses were explained to us as working like nails to hold up vaulted ceilings and at Norwich they are highly decorated. Inside the Cathedral they actually tell the entire story of the Bible from one end of the nave to the other. Richard walked the labyrinth and we asked several of the volunteers about different things around the area.

As we still had some time until the Cathedral was open, we walked down towards the river to visit Pull's Ferry where the stones would have been brought to build the Cathedral. Originally there was a canal that was built from this location all the way to the Cathedral grounds but its since been filled in as a road. By this time the ceremony had let out and we headed back towards the Cathedral.

The Cathedral is massively tall and quite large. It reminded us a lot of Westminster Abbey with its splendor. There were walkways on each side with memorials on the walls and in small alcoves as well as large tombs between the massive archways. Walking towards the altar we found more memorials, beautiful stained glass windows and stone work. Behind the screen was a gorgeous section of carved benches for the choir and behind that the pulpit and organ. Since Norwich was the second largest city the Bishop of Norwich was very important and much of the splendor was due to his residence.

We tried to go to the gift shop to buy postcards of the shots we couldn't get (the bosses were 70 feet in the air) but the shop closed early. Apparently all the volunteers were angry the school had "invaded" their space and were saying as much every time we spoke to them. And the rental company guys cleaning up the extra chairs, video screens and sound system were complaining about the public trying to view the church. We headed back to our car and back to Dereham.

We decided to make dinner for Mary since she didn't want to go out so we stopped at a local grocery store. After a mad hut for Teriyaki sauce we had the materials we needed to make a nice salmon dinner. We had tea when we got back to her house with a nice fruit cake from the woman that helps her clean. Mike and I got to look at a few of Mary's watercolors that she has in binders. One is of all the clothes in Bishop Bonner's Cottages for their records. Another was every flower that came up in her garden, in order, for a year with little tidbits about the plant. Another, done in the same year as the flowers, was of all of her china and porcelain. She has quite few nice pieces and several sentimental ones.

Richard made salmon with a mango salsa and potatoes and Mike made a spinach salad with dried cranberries, mushrooms and walnuts. We all ate our fill and we had plenty of leftovers. We didn't even get to the dessert we'd planned. We walked home and crashed, again.