This was all a bit spontaneous and – for once – Nathan’s idea. I know, a night in a random seaside town is totally the kind of thing I would come up with but this time it was him. Maybe he’s missing the glory days of 2007, when we used to go to the seaside every month. These things were easier before we had children.
Anyway, we have children now and one of those children had to be dropped somewhere in the Norfolk Broads at unearthly o’clock on a Bank Holiday Sunday. This gave the rest of us a good stretch of time before we had to be online on Tuesday and why not go to the seaside?
And why not go to Great Yarmouth?
Well, the reaction of some of my colleagues when I mentioned where we were going might have been reason enough but I’m not sure what they were getting at. So, it’s seen better days. Haven’t most British seaside towns? As long as there’s sand and sea and the occasional glimpse of sun, it’ll do us just fine.
We got to Great Yarmouth just before lunchtime, after successfully abandoning Roo in the middle of nowhere with a brand new minor head injury. We managed to park near our hotel and opposite the pier, which seemed to be free parking and close by to everything. Having driven past some nice-looking pubs on the Broads, Nathan and I were both angling for a pub lunch but the seafront didn’t seem to yield many nice country pubs, weirdly enough. There was one pub called the Barking Smack but that looked packed out and so we wandered into town.
Yeah, there wasn’t much in town. Though we found an abandoned chapel that looked like a plucky young theatre company might come and claim it at any moment. It even had a blue door!
I’m not sure we even found the town centre because Eva was dropping hints that turned into strong suggestions about going back to the seafront and getting some chips. I wanted to eat in somewhere because it was still a couple of hours before we could check into the hotel and the weather was Bank Holiday-unpredictable. Eva insisted she’d seen a chip shop with tables inside so we walked back that way and found The Corner, which did indeed have tables inside.
As it happened, it was good choice of hers. The chips were cooked by a very jovial man in a nautical hat and we were served by an equally lady on the till. They were good chips too and definitely a decent price. They take card as well, which is a bonus as we only had a tenner and some Euros on us.
Fully chip-fed, we went for another little wander. We’d already had one paddle but it wasn’t long before Eva were back in the sea again. It wasn’t quite as warm as Turkey but it wasn’t what I’d call freezing either. Nathan may beg to differ.
But Nathan was sitting up on the stubby pier with a pint so he was alright. When I say pier, I think we were expecting it to be a little longer….like maybe something that went out further than the beach did. But no, the end of pier amusements were still very much on land. You can see where the pier used to be though:
The bit of beach on the north side of the pier had been dogfree but I think the rules were different on the south side of the pier. You can guess which beach Eva preferred. In fact, she declared it a “doggyfnarea” because of the sheer number of good bois and girls running about.
It was almost time to check into the hotel, but first I had some urgent punning to do which involved the drink Eva had bought at the chip shop. Is this the real life or is this just…?
We were staying at the St George hotel, which seemed like it was going to be delightfully eccentric, much like the BnB I’d stayed at in Devon. It did have some eclectic decor – a broken piano alongside a fish tank alongside some Toby jugs – but the staff we met were disappointing pleasant and didn’t even scold us about our breakfast choices. Probably because there was no breakfast “due to the pandemic”. Do you see why I thought it was going to be quirky?
Having checked in, we headed down to Whippy World where Eva and I shared a Biscoff Whippy Tray. It was three piles of whip, so most definitely a sharer although the lady serving us said she’d people tackle it solo before. Nathan had a strawberry Whippy shake I think.
While we ate our ice cream, I prebooked tickets for the Sea Life Centre behind us which I think was a requirement. Apparently, they’re still in pandemic times as well. But there were still 3PM tickets available and it didn’t close till 5PM, despite what Google Maps said so it all worked fine. I actually booked for 3:10 because, weirdly, it was £8 cheaper than booking on the hour or half hour. Paid for the Whippy Tray anyway.
The Sea Life Centre was lots of fun. I’m a bit scared of fish, as I’d remember the following day, but this place had penguins! Who doesn’t love penguins? Well, apart from possibly Benedict Cumberbatch. And to be honest, I wasn’t sure about Eva given that she was rooting for a seal to eat a penguin at the Earth Experience.
But she did love these funny fellas
She also liked the jellyfish room, with its cool UV lighting:
But her favourite thing was in the room with the shark tank. For some reason, she’d been singing the “That’s a Moray” song all day, so she was thrilled to see a real live moray. I didn’t get a good picture of it but it’s in there somewhere:
I also thought the giant turtle was cool. And as you walk through the tunnel you can get realll close to those sharks.
In the next room, there was the chance to stroke a millipede, which felt oddly like computer cabling, and a slightly camera-shy axolotl:
Oh and a photo opportunity with the clown fish:
Isn’t that like a perfect 90s screensaver?
There was also this giant eel thing, which invited you to reach into its mouth to retrieve a magic pearl. This picture of Eva doing that looks like she’s been papped stumbling out of a nightclub with a mystery beau:
Oh, and did I mention that they got the perfect celebrity to open this aquarium? Yup, renowned pop culture icon and weatherman Michael Fish:
By the time we’d managed to leave the giftshop, the weather had definitely turned for the stormier which would seem to be un-ideal for sea-swimming:
But you should know me by now – I’d swim in the rain. More surprising was that Eva also agreed to paddle in the rain and so did Nathan, although he was pretty much forced to because Eva was. I wanted to go a bit further out so he was on paddle-watch:
As it was, I was still scraping my knees on the bottom but at least I got a full immersion swim. Nathan again mentioned that the water may have been a bit chillier than the Med, despite my salespitch to the contrary.
After that, we headed back to the hotel for a bath and a cup of tea before heading out to dinner at HMS Hinchinbrook, which was pretty much next door to where we’d had lunch. Despite building up an appetite from my swim, I was still kinda full from lunch chips but I did my best on another pile of chips and a very tasty lasagne.
Eva had read that there was battered halloumi on the menu so of course that’s what she had…along with a vegan burger, garlic bread and yet more chips. Nathan had a burger and yup, chips again.
It was only natural that, after all this feeding, our thoughts would turn to breakfast. As our hotel didn’t provide it, I was planning to go to the Beefeater restaurant at the Premier Inn, which was just a bit further down the seafront. I tried to book online but couldn’t quite understand the timeslots so suggested that we head down there to book in person. In Turkey, we always had a sea-side walk after dinner to help our food go down so this seemed like a fine tradition to uphold.
Like the sea, this walk was Chillier Than Turkey. Eva, who claims not to feel the cold, was shivering in her dress and we ended up sharing a cardigan as we walked past the Pleasure Beach fairground.
The restaurant was also a bit further away than I’d thought but we managed to book for the next morning and then just had a chilly stroll back to our hotel, awkwardly bumping into each other under the cardigan canopy. But the main thing was that we let our food go down before bed…and that we still had another day to look forward to the next day.
