A Norfolk village (1)

For the purpose of visiting Houghton we stayed in a small village nearby; a village which sported a church and a pub but no shops, although there was the odd house with a name like 'The Old Post Office'. There was also the most faded telephone box that I have ever seen, although I did not get close enough to find out whether there was still a telephone inside. (I suppose that this part of BT makes a thumping great loss these days, but I daresay that there would be great howls of disgust from the media should they suggest doing away with this bit of heritage altogether in this age of the mobile phone).

We were able to get into the (Grade II listed) church on the occasion of an adjacent open garden (http://www.ngs.org.uk/), to find that it was indeed old but not much used. But it did have a pleasingly dignified feeling and there was a fine collection of relatively recently embroidered kneelers, of which one is illustrated; somebody or somebodies had clearly been very busy. There were also some nice trees outside and the grass had recently been mown.

Strange mixture of houses. Quite a lot of old cottages, much refurbished. Rather more new housing, some of it quite grand - five bedrooms with detached double garage sitting in an acre or so sort of thing. One consequence of which was much evidence of underground water works dotted about; drains look to have been a problem in the not too distant past.

Strange pub, which looked newish and much extended, but on closer inspection the front wall of the central building was quite old. Why would one spend so much on a village pub in such a small village? It seemed odd given the rate at which village pubs are closing - but no-one was saying insurance job, with this last being my first thought. But we had a decent lunch there with me having a first ever hot pork pie, that is to say a hot meat pie of the sort that one more usually puts beef in, rather than a warmed up pork pie. It was rather good and had probably, I thought, been confected from the left overs of the Sunday roast. Decent pint (the first for a while) named for the famous Norfolk nurse, Edith Cavell.

Lots of barley in the fields. The farming scene seemed to be that most of the big fields were given over to barley, some to sugar beet and some to fodder crops. Odd corners, of which there were quite a lot, left rough or used to graze horses. Plenty of scope for the wannabee smallholder. As always, the grass in any field containing horses was very short. Why does one so rarely see a horse in a long grass field - to which the shape of their heads and the position of their eyes are so well adapted? It can't just be down to the fact that a horse gets through a lot more grass to the kilo than the more efficient cow.

Lots of footpaths through fields and woods, one of which a stray cottager (ex townie I should think) told me had once been licensed for the growth of opium, with the result for a few years of the opium flavour of poppy popping up in the hedgerows. And I had thought all the legit. stuff (of which we must get through plenty) was grown in Tasmania for some reason. Plenty of walks available without needing to get into the car - this being rather contrary to my memory of Norwich which I thought was rather impoverished in the countryside walk department.

Sadly we missed the annual snail race, a Grade II listed event in the snail racing world.