Yes. The sunset was indeed very nice, as evidenced by the fact that there’s been no Photoshop trickery on that picture.

So, it was the bank holiday weekend, and with a half promise of good weather, we decided to take the tent to Norfolk. It’s over a year since its last outing, so it deserved a chance to stretch its guy ropes somewhere more interesting than the loft or the garden.

Saturday was, undoubtedly, the best day for weather. We cruised north on empty roads in the scorching sun. It blazed all around us, forcing the pigs of East Anglia to seek shelter in deep puddles of mud. The further we got from Chelmsford, the more agricultural the views (and the smells) became, until we plunged into the depths of the 90-square-mile Thetford Forest, our course set for Swaffham.

Interestingly, there’s we passed a place, not so far from Swaffham, called Podmore. Why interesting? Because Podmore was the name of the butler in The Hippopotamus, by Stephen Fry, which was set at Swaffham Hall. I wonder if he had to look far for his inspiration…

We ended up at Holkom. I wanted to see the miles and miles of beach, which were used for the closing shots of Shakespeare in Love, but we diverted to the hall in search of food, and then back to Wells Next The Sea (now a mile from the sea due to silting up) in search of somewhere to stay for the night.

It was about twoish by now, I’d guess, and the place was heaving. Everywhere we looked, every spare spot of bench or wall or quayside was covered in an unfit lump eating chips - a trend that continued for all of our time in Norfolk. Each night we would pass long queues of people outside chip shops, and every morning, in the run up to lunch, it was queues just as long outside the bakeries.

Unfortunately, there was a similar queue at every camp site. I had been worried that we might have left it too late, and my fears were confirmed when we ended up being sent 15 miles or so out of town to a ‘working farm’ with non-working drainage further along the coast at Weybourne.

Now Weybourne isn’t that well known, but its neighbour - Sherringham - can boast the biggest duvet machine in North Norfolk. Now if that’s not enough to keep you awake at night with excitement, I don’t know what is. We did try and glimpse it through the launderette windows, but unfortunately we’d spent too long walking along the pebbly beach, and it was closed.

We consoled ourselves with dinner, then headed back to the farm, now ablaze in the light of several dozen fires set worryingly close to the tents. We played cards and hoped for rain to put out the flames before they consumed us all.

Sunday was grey. They’d predicted as much, but it still cut down our options. We decided to try and see the seals, but their end of the headland was closed until August, and so instead we drove out to Holt, the end of the North Norfolk Railway.

Its fliers say it was voted the best tourist attraction in north Norfolk, much like Sherringham’s duvet machine is the biggest in north Norfolk. In fact, thinking about it, a lot of things were the most ‘xxx’ in north Norfolk. It feels like a very separate part of East Anglia to the rest of Norfolk, and there are pools of Union Jacks here and there, and our ‘working farm’ has a big UK Independence Party board poorly hidden at the back of one of its barns. This is obviously a very proud bit of the country.

So anyway, the railway. There are four stations and plenty of trains and ten and a half miles of track. It takes about twenty minutes to get from one end to the other, and in the great tradition of British railways, it set off five minutes late.

It was a very relaxing way to spend a morning. We trundled through the countryside, the sun peeping through the clouds, on seats far more comfortable than the ones they put in modern trains. It’s pitiful that 50-year old trains can run better and be more comfortable than the ones we have to ride to work each day.

We had lunch at the station in Sherringham (which was starting to become a bit of a regular spot for the weekend), let two trains go and then rode the third back along the line to Holt where the station yard is full of old junk from broken down trains.

We tried Wells again, but it was still too full to sit down, although this time the quayside was full of people catching crabs, their hooks bated with bacon, so spent half an hour driving along to Hunstanton, where we watched the sun go down over The Wash. It was a fantastic colour, starting out yellow and running through every shade of orange and red until it finally sank down into the sea woke up the Japanese.

That made up for the grey day. I think I’d quite happily have cloudy days every day if you could guarantee such a spectacular ending.

There was no such joy today. I was up by six and went for a walk around the farm. That turned out to be a bit of a mistake, as it soaked the only shoes I had with me, and I ended up feeling wet all day.

The weather was foul. It poured down - really poured - so we headed for home and, after a missed turning, didn’t see anything familiar until we got to Thetford, the thick-tongued town that turned out to be closed. Even Boots was shut. No coffee. No sandwiches. We ended up sitting in the car eating Garibaldi biscuits and drinking Dr Pepper.

Hmmm.

1. Happy campers
   We were so lucky with the weather. After half a week of moving Rich's belongings from Ipswich to Chelmsford, we took off with the tent...
   
   
2. A very British obsession
   They say the weather is something of a British obsession, and having watched the last couple of days' worth of news bulletins, I can believe...
   
   
3. Bluewater
   The weather has been foul all day. It was pouring before I woke up. I could hear it on the window before I'd even emerged...