Norwich? Swaffham I say!

Disclaimer: It's a biggy! No! Not that (although....anyways) it's a long post :)


So recently TB and I took a trip down to Norwich, motherland of the barbie herself.

TB has family and friends down there and since it was high time she visited, yours truly was dragged along for the ride.

Now I had heard all sorts of wacky things about this country bumpkin city of Norwich so I was looking forward to exercising my piss-taking skills to the max.

Saturday morning came and off we went to pick up the hire car. I had fully invisaged problem upon problem (just because I was being pessimistic) but much to my surprise, 1 hour later we were on our way to Norwich (which I now pronounce Nor-witch). We were expecting an 8 hour trip all told so we prepared ourself for the long haul by stopping and picking up supplies at a local service station before hitting the motorway proper.

6 hours later and we were in Newark and making excellent time. We stopped at a service station to pick up some petrol and let me relieve my aching bladder, to find a great big "Out of Order" sign on the toilets.

Fuckbucket!

I spotted a cafe/shop/sheepmarket/childseller to the left and decided that they must have toilets.

I wasn't disappointed, but I have to admit, it was difficult to ignore the 250 signs on the approach to the bathroom letting "patrons" know that if you didn't buy anything in the shop, you would be charged 30p for use of the toilets.

30p!! £30p to piss?!! I think not!

With my eyes learning to swim, I skipped into the bathrooms, pissed and headed straight back out, waving to the woman behind the till on my way out.

30p! Jokers! And they say Scottish people are tight!

The 1 hour trip between Newark and Norwich was spent finding amusing alternative meanings for the ridiculous place names en route. My favourite was "Swaffham" which I pronounced with as strong a Scottish accent as I could muster pronouncing it Swaff-im and implying it was some action one would take in Glasgow when you wanted your mate to take someone else out with a bottle.

We got into Norwich with no issues and got ourselves in the hotel. Norwich was well prepared for my arrival and when looking out the hotel window I saw this:



Holy Shit (I proclaimed). We were in a hotel next to the Starship Voyager!!!

It turns out that it was actually the bus garage that they were building when TB last visited, but I called it Voyager from that moment on.

My interest peaked when I realised that Voyager was taking aboard a number of earthlings cleverly concealed within buses. The buses were clearly colour coded to seperate the strong from the weak and I was facinated, snapping pictures of every different coloured bus I could find.






There was a double decker blue bus (which clearly had the very important people in it), but the slippery little bastard kept avoiding my lens, first by hiding in Voyager and secondly by waiting till I was distracted momentarily before speeding away at top speed to escape. It even taunted me on the last day in the city centre and I wasn't ready for it.

I'll get you blue bus!!!

Anyywwaayyy.....

The rest of the trip was spent meeting TB's parents as well as most of her friends, and they were all really cool. Spent more time with Rick than anyone else, and I was pleased to find he's as bonkers as I am.

I mean really, you couldn't very well say that this man was sane, could you? :




The last bit of the trip was spent visiting what TB insisted was Norwich castle, but having driven passed it on the way into Norwich I assured her it must be a prison.

I mean come on!:




We were lucky to get the "pop in for a pound" deal because we were in the last hour of opening time, and boy was I glad. It wasn't a bad visit, but there's some odd shit happening in there!

For instance, I stumbled across a section of the prison which had some visual aids for visitors (of the non residential kind of course) but on closer inspection I realised I was looking at a video feed of the archway directly in front of the screen.




In the words of the french - "Ques que le fook?"

I did like some of the eerieness about the place though. This well placed knight in the window looked more than real from across the other side:




There was a section in the prison which detailed a nomadic people who's name now eludes me (I'll check with TB) and this just raised more questions.

I mean, take a look at this:




What's HE waiting for eh? The less said the better me thinks.

After getting lessons on how to be a Roman...




...I was introduced to Norwich's idea of Virtual Reality:




That was the last straw and I had to leave - quickly :)

So all in all, a fun trip, full of nonsense, oddities and good people. Just my kind of trip :)