Norwich and the end of the rainbow …

We set out on one tube train and changed to the Central line and found out what it is like to travel on the tubes at peak time! When we got on the train was full, but we squeezed in. At the next station more people squeezed in and at the next station and the next! No-one seemed to get off. It was very hot and very very crowded. At last we reached Liverpool Street station where we caught the train to Norwich. This proved to be a very comfortable 2 hour journey through the East Anglia region. On arriving in Norwich we met Shaun and set off to drop off our bags at the nearby Station Hotel which was a quaint old country hotel.

We then began exploring Norwich which is a very old city with quaint streets going in all directions and little alley ways joining them. In the middle on top of a high hill is a very old Norman castle. We walked around this castle and saw how it divided the Normans and the Saxons. From there we wandered down to a Market where Jill at long last bought something ….. A pair of inner soles for her burning feet!!

Norwich seems to have a church on every other corner, each one older than the other. All constructed from amazing stonework, but the highlight was the Cathedral, a 900 year old building that survived the Monarchs changing from Roman Catholic to Protestant and back and forth destroying each other’s churches as they changed. This building was almost equal in size to Westminister with the main church and a large chapel with numerous smaller chapels built all around. The ceiling of this building would have been over 30 metres high with quite intricate Romanesque style architecture. I found it to be quite inspiring. We then continued to wander through the city and then said goodbye to Shaun who had to prepare for work later on.

In the evening we went to see the show in which he is understudying one of the male leads, called End of the Rainbow, the story of Judy Garland during a period in which she was based in London with her much younger fiancé. The lead playing Judy Garland, Tracie Bennett has just completed a six month very successful run of the play in the West End and she was absolutely superb in the role. We could see how Shaun would fit into the role he is understudying (the fiancé), as we saw a lot of resemblance to the person playing the role. We thoroughly enjoyed the play and caught up with him afterwards for a drink and I had the opportunity to try a nice warm pint of local ale. Different, but okay. He took us to our hotel, then went off to join the crew and we believe it was 4 am before he retired to his bed. Oh to be young again!

We started the new day with a traditional English breakfast – pork sausage, egg, bacon and baked beans. Couldn’t do it every day, but enjoyed it today. Caught up with Shaun about 11 a.m. and retired to a coffee house where he could have breakfast and continue to sort our iPad problems. Didn’t do much else today as we mainly wanted to catch up with him and his news. Eventually it was time to catch our 5 p.m. train back to London. So we said our goodbye’s and boarded. That’s when things began to go pear shaped. Somebody decided to ‘end it’ by train further down the line and as a result of this, stopped all trains on this line from entering London. People who do such things don’t endear themselves to passengers. When we reached Colchester we were told that because of the bank up of trains unable to get to their destination, our train was being terminated and so we had to join another train. We travelled a few kilometres, then crawled a few of kilometres more until we reached a place called Sherifield where we were once again told that this train would be terminated and we would have to join yet another train!! This one eventually got us into Liverpool Street station, an hour and a quarter later than we had expected. From here we still had to catch two tubes before reaching Earls Court and walking to our hotel. Overall it was a great trip. We very glad we got an opportunity to visit Norwich and delighted that we got to see the play and can understand why Shaun so desperately wanted to be part of it.