Lots of walking, plenty of sea air and a generous amount of sunshine.
We started the day of with breakfast out at the nearby Emmerdale Farm Shop cafe - the Red Poll Tearooms. Lovely people but at best a 5 out of 10 for the breakfast. The heavens opened for about an hour so, when we arrived at Dunwich Beach car park we were forced to read for a bit until it stopped. The sun obligingly came out at about 1pm and it stayed out until sunset.
After the deluge we walked along the very quiet shingle beach towards Sizewell. I managed to get a swim at a particularly secluded part of the beach - no access due to a dangerous looking cliff. The water was a little prickly when getting in but, like all sea swims, was absolutely gorgeous after 30 seconds of flapping about like a lunatic. I have also rather alarmingly noticed that I tend to have a bout of turrets when I plunge myself into cold water. The language, I seem to uncontrollably use, is colourful to say the least!! I was then stung by a wasp while drying off - he probably heard the foul language earlier and was taking revenge!
We walked even further (southwards?) until we got to a cliff top campsite (Cliff House Holiday Park) and were able to use their cliff stairs to clamber up to the road. Dunwich Heath is National Trust land so we were able to find a very pleasant footpath through some wonderful countryside back to the fascinating village of Dunwich.
In medieval times Dunwich was the 6th biggest port in England with a population of over 5k. It is now no more than a hamlet of about 50 houses. The rest of it literally fell into the sea over the centuries. We got a healthy dose of history by visiting the informative village museum and the very evocative ruins on the hill of Greyfriars Abbey. To put the icing on the cake of a very enjoyable afternoon, Kim star spotted someone outside the village pub. After a lot of Google research she confirmed the siting as Donald Sumpter. He’s been in loads of things - including Game of Thrones. Turns out he was born in Brixworth!? It’s a funny old world?
We fancied fish and chips so we travelled the 9 miles into Southwold. We travelled it very gingerly as it turns out the Volvo has a slow puncture which necessitates a daily visit to the tyre pressure machine at the local garage! We consulted Trip Advisor and ended up at the Little Fish and Chip Shop on East street. It was good but not memorable. The homemade curry sauce was worthy of mention but the Haddock was at best average.
More walking. This time to the pier and then all the way from the pier to the town on the lower promenade looking at the hundreds of colourful beach huts. 60k each seemed to be the going price but some of them looked worth every penny! Southwold beach with the tide out is a great place for sand castles and some dads had been really busy - including one enterprising chap who had built a scale model of the Coliseum ... very impressive. I really can’t think why I didn’t take a bloody picture of it! Sorry!
Home to Brunnehilda for another evening of reading and blogging. Oh, and Kim beat me at a game of Canasta - unsurprisingly she had all the good cards and I had all the dross!
I really must get that puncture fixed tomorrow!
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