East Anglia Tour - Day 3

In the fenlands in the morning the sky stooped to touch the earth  and curtains of rain swept across a sullen landscape. It was then, with little joy that we left Huntingdon for our first destination, March. There were breaks in the rain but it was a cold day and we wore coats for the first time in a long while. Forays from the car were possible but poor light threatened satisfactory photography even when the rain did not. My discomfort was heightened by the lingering and cumulative effects of too much recent chillied food. Several things caught my eye in March but our main destination there was the station. In fact we spent enough time there to eat into our schedule and this combined with the weather which turned nastier again, meant that we did not visit Peterborough but went straight to Stamford. That is an attractive town. Lunch with friends at The Cloisters was excellent; the food was of really good quality and I recommend the restaurant to anyone. It was a bit of a shock at the end of the meal when their PDQ machine failed and we were asked to pay in cash. By the banks of the River Nene geese were gathering, perhaps the vanguard of a bigger winter invasion. We could see there were two types and later determined that they were Canada and a minority of Greylag. How confusing that Greylag are pink footed; how amusing that these geese were beside a river called Nene. If you are not a goose fan you will have no idea what I am talking about.

The light was never kind but in our next stop of Kings Lynn the rather unspectacular town was brightened for me by one of the busiest bus stations I have seen and an incomparable vantage point (a multi-storey car park) from which to take photographs. Little more could be done now as the day died and only Friday evening traffic lay between us and our Norwich hotel. Norwich is a city of substantial size which we hope to explore better tomorrow. For this evening there was little to encourage us to leave the hotel. With its main restaurant busy, we ate in Zest Cafe and received a very pleasant surprise. We both ordered the potentially mundane pan-fried chicken with garlic-mushroom sauce and fries. It was beautifully cooked and presented and vegetable side dishes of equal quaility made the meal. The only irritation was a table of 11-12 rowdy alpha males competing loudly in unelocuted baritones between intakes of the cafe's entire stock of Corona. I like to think they weren't golfers - maybe some sort of very insignificant local football team.