Norfolk and J.R.R. Tolkien's Grave - 2002

Picture Album

Random Recollections
  • We were impressed with the hedgerows. They looked just about as we expected. The thing that we were not expecting was that many of these hedgerow lanes in the rural areas were one lane rows. If you met an oncoming car you had to pull over as best you could to let the other car pass. Sometimes you even had to back up until you found a pullout.
  • One of our interesting experiences was passing a truck parked on the side of the highway taking up half the road in the heavy English fog and rain at night around a blind curve on our first cross-country trip driving on the left side of the road in England (after two days earlier driving on the right side in France).
  • One of the unexpected things we encountered driving in England was that we were so far north that the sun, being very low in the sky, got in our eyes at noon when we were heading south.
  • We found that the local drivers were much more comfortable with the roads than we were. I'm not so sure that this was justified however. Once we had ventured about 45 minutes from our last birding stop when we got out of the car and went to get our scopes out of the trunk. We discovered that we had left Chris Padley's scope at the earlier stop. He turned around and began racing back to see if he could get to the scope before it disappeared. I remember racing by the corners of buildings that were less than a yard from the road around curves at 50+ mph. Everything there is built compactly to minimize the space that towns take out of the countryside. If someone had stepped out of a house or rounded a corner at just the wrong moment, they would have been hit. Passing other vehicles at high speed along small curving roads is an experience all to itself. When we return to the spot where we had left the scope it was gone. However we checked at the local police station, and some kind soul had turned it in there. We certainly were relieved.
  • We had the most wonderful accommodations and treatment in Little Walsingham. Chris and Helen Padley were the most gracious hosts. They said that they had recently taken a trip to Texas where they had been treated with great courtesy and kindness, and they wanted to return the favor. They most certainly did. From the time we arrived until we left they waited on us hand and foot and showed us some of the best birding in England. They own a wonderful bed and breakfast and the accommodations were romantic and comfortable. The meals is that they prepared were fit for a true gourmet.
  • We had many adventures with the roundabouts. We found that when you approached the roundabout there were signs for towns. However the signs were not limited only to towns in front of you, they also included towns that could be reached from the roundabout in a direction that you had already passed. We found this most disconcerting since we could never tell from the signs of the towns exactly where we were. And since most intersections were roundabouts with roads coming off in all directions you did not get the sense of north-south east-west directions that you get in the States as a rule.
  • We finally realized that they are absolutely enamored with roundabouts when we saw a McDonald's near a small strip mall. We turned into the parking lot for this small, and then tried to drive over to the parking lot for the Mac Donald's, but found that they had a roundabout between the two parking lots. It seemed like overkill in the extreme to us.
  • I also noticed that simple crossroads that have a small circle in the center of the intersection represent a roundabout. The significance of this is that oncoming cars that want to turn have the right of way instead of the car going straight even if they turn right in front of you. If there is no circle, I assumed that the car going straight had the right of way. Luckily I didn't have an accident sorting out these nuances, but I was always uneasy when I approached an intersection.