Day 9 - Pentney to Hemsby

We spent a very comfortable night at Little Abbey Farm in Pentney and started the day with an excellent breakfast made by Diane, our landlady. On hearing about the ride she very generously sponsored us.
My bike had also spent a comfortable night under cover:

The farm is a working farm and keeps chickens, pigs and sometimes cattle as well. It was great sitting there in the breakfast room watching the chickens being corralled by a large cockerel.

Because my original route was based on a planned overnight a few miles further north, I had to do a bit of replanning and adapted my route to suit.

All sorted, I set off - with the bright sunny sky, I decided it was a day for wearing shorts but with the wind still blowing I wore my fleece until I'd got warmed up.
Once again, I was enjoying the riding and the sights that unrolled before my eyes.

Talking with Diane at breakfast time, she'd mentioned that one of her family would shortly be taking part in a bike ride between a number of churches in the region and I realised that there were actually a lot of churches around. It also got me thinking about the fact that churches are very clearly defined on OS maps and that I was using them to check my route - they were easy to see in the landscape and made it easy for me to keep my bearings.

As I passed through a village called Castle Acre I noticed that not only did it feature the remains of an abbey, it also featured the remains of a castle and also this archway:

In the next village I stopped for a drink of water and a piece of chocolate. Whilst I was enjoying that I could hear a jet aeroplane and managed to spot it - it was a Eurofighter just a couple of miles away. I was hoping it would fly around a bit but I think it was just on its final approach to RAF Marham. As I was looking at it I heard a car pull up behind me and when I looked around, a young vicar had got out of the car. He asked me where Lexham Hall was, but although I had no idea, I had a map and soon found it and provided him with some instructions.

Here's another example of how I was using a church to navigate - I knew from the map that there was a church with a tower in the approaching village and that the road would bear left before turning right and going past the church. As you can see from this photo, that's exactly what the road is about to do.

A little later I could see that there appeared to be a disused railway crossing the road - looking right I could see some track - but it was looking a bit disjointed:
Looking left the track had mainly gone and the station buildings were being used for some other activity:

Shortly after, I arrived in Aylsham having covered 34 miles in just over 2 hours - not bad for a fatty! Looking at the clock I realised I could treat myself and take a ride on a narrow guage steam railway. So I did. It was the Bure Valley Railway and having purchased my ticket I'd soon loaded myself and my bike into one of the carriages.

The train took me seven miles to Wroxham - Ali reckons it wasn't cheating if I sat on my bike the whole way. Jan met me at the end and we went into Wroxham and had lunch at a riverside pub.

The afternoon ride would just be 15 miles or so and as most of that was on an A-road I didn't take any pictures until I got back on the quieter roads. I stopped at this village because it seemed to be named after my mum:

Here's the village sign:

Janice went past me about now and I knew I was nearly finished. I took a slight detour to go through Winterton on Sea to recce where we were going for tea tonight and passed this rather large church tower:

Finally I arrived at Hemsby - it was a bit of an eye opener with amusement arcades all over the place, but I made my way through it, found Janice and we took a couple of photos to mark the end of the ride:

Once again I've completed a long ride and couldn't have done so without my Jan. She's sorted out some great accommodation and kept me supplied with food, water and good cheer throughout the ride.

For our final night on the road, we'd booked into a B&B at Great Yarmouth - here's the view from our bedroom window:

.... and here's the view in the dark:

and a closer view of the windfarm:

After settling in, we went out for the evening and met up with Russ and Tracey in their home village of Winterton-on-Sea. We spent the evening reminiscing and chatting about, well, life, the universe and everything! It was really good to meet them both and provided a nice finish to what has been a very enjoyable and sociable bike ride.

Thanks to all those friends and family who met up with us on the ride and thanks everyone else for tuning in and reading for the last 9 days.

Bob and Jan.