Do you wish you were here?

It’s been some time since my ‘two weeks in the sun’ have been spent in this country. Of course for ‘sun’ substitute the phrase ‘wind, rain, grey skies and the occasional sight of a big yellow thing in the sky’.

However, this year me and my family departed Thornton Towers and headed for North Norfolk.

It’s long been a favourite destination of ours but this was the first time we’d visited for our main holiday.

THE WEATHER

We’d been eagerly checking the weather forecasts for some time and watched it go from the promise of a heatwave at the end of August to ‘unsettled and cooler than average for the time of year’.

Not for the first time I made a note to self to encourage my kids to consider meterology as a career option as it seems to be the only job where you can get away with being consistently wrong.

It would be inaccurate to say it didn’t ever dampen our enthusiasm because at times our souls were soaked but it did force us to be creative.

DAYS OUT

We only had three beach days and we’d been planning many more so instead we made several trips to outdoor attractions including BeWILDerwood, Roarr Dinosaur Adventure and Pensthorpe Natural Park.

All are great (albeit wallet-emptying days out) and all have lots of things for little people to run, jump and climb over.

Kindly, my kids didn’t want me to miss out on any of the ‘fun’ and insisted I joined in. It reminded me how much I miss the joy of fully functioning knees!

NORWICH

Another day’s destination was Norwich. I admit I had zero enthusiasm for this one - and maybe, because my expectations were so low, I was pleasantly surprised.

I’d never visited the city before (in my ignorance I didn’t even know it had a castle at its heart) but I shall return.

It benefits from not having its old buildings ripped out in the name of progress (Queensgate et al).

Shops are not really my thing but Mrs T commented on the mix of big name chains and classy smaller independents. And to my untrained eye it certainly wasn’t a depressing parade of bookies, vape outlets and mobile phone shops.

The market is bang in the centre and doesn’t look like some unloved after thought.

There was bags of quality street entertainment from plays to jazz and rock bands and of course a dinosaur trail!

It’s staggering to think that Norwich has roughly half the population of Peterborough yet offers so much.

I think there are lessons to be learned by our city leaders.

To echo Queen Delia of the Smith, ‘Norwich, you shall be ‘aving me again’.

SEADOGS

No trip to the North Norfolk coast is complete without a boat ride to see the seals at Bleakney Point. We struck lucky and our trip coincided with a rare guest appearance with the sun.

Our friendly guide (the great grandson of the venture’s founder) had plenty of fun facts including that seals were related to dogs.

I whispered to Mrs T: “Surely, that can’t be true, I would have heard of that before!’’

Later I consulted Mr Google, who confirmed this was a non-urban myth. Mind you if we go again I won’t be correcting the , er, salty seadog as he had arms like Popeye.

It was a great holiday but hopefully next year we’ll be heading abroad – I need some sun!

An old dinosaur and me (right) in Norwich