If you read my last post about Great Yarmouth., you’ll realise that I still had another day’s worth of seaside fun to tell you about. So strap in…there are model villages still to come.
First though, breakfast. We’d managed to book into the Beefeater for breakfast at 9:45 but we were ready and hungry at 8:30ish so Eva and I went for a wander to find some pre-breakfast breakfast. The convenience store on the seafront was closed so we walked up past the Hippodrome, which I would have liked to visit if we’d been in Great Yarmouth for a bit longer.
We found a Londis which supplied us with Biscoff cream cookies and also some German crisps for the drive home that were Subway Teriyaki flavour (FYI – they schmeckt gut). Eva and Nathan wanted to drive down to the Beefeater rather than do that walk again so even with all the wandering about, we still arrived 20 minutes early. Time for another paddle:
And then a good fuel up at the Beefeater breakfast buffet which is essentially a Premier Inn breakfast under a slightly different brand. At £20 for all three of us and unlimited everything, it was pretty good value.
Then we drove back up to the seafront, spent ages trying to find a parking spot again and had to squeeze into one between two quite badly parked cars. Lucky that ours is so teeny really.
Talking of teeny, time for the model village. And yes, we did quote Hot Fuzz on the way.
At the entrance, other people seemed to be asking for fish food so we also asked for this. I wasn’t quite sure why we needed it but at a pound a bag, it seemed worth doing. The model village is quite densely packed, with the path taking you round all the different models in quite a prescriptive way. This worked well for getting lots of people flowing around the site at the same time but there were a few bottlenecks where different groups were going at different paces. Eva wanted to look at everything as we went, so we would have taken a slow lane option if there had been one.
Talking of different, what era was this village set in? That was our pretty constant question as we wandered around. And what kind of village includes not just an airport but a rocket launchpad?
So initially, I was thinking kinda trad 50s:
But some of the hairstyles had a definite 70s feel:
And then there were modern minis, which are post 2000…and a take on the London Eye which is also millennial (although could be based on the Great Yarmouth Eye behind it, which is even newer)
All very confusing!
Oh, and there was a very suspect block of flats which seemed to be exclusively let to the swingers’ market. I did take a photo but decided there were too many tiny naked bottoms to include on my PG-rated blog.
Anachronisms aside, this was a fascinating place to visit. There was so much detail in all the models and lots of them had soundtracks – available via a button – as well as things to look at. These nuns might look like they’re from the Exorcist but they were singing the “Morning Hymn/Alleluia” bit from the start of the Sound of Music. You gotta love a random SoM reference.
Eva had a go on the remote control cars and boats (£1 each) and there was also mini golf.
And the fish food? Well, there were plenty of hungry mouths to feed:
Yeah, this is where I remembered how fishphobic I am. I think they would try and eat me if I fell in.
And talking about scary, check out this giant pigeon:
The winding path took us through the gift shop and popped us right out onto the beach, so Eva went for a bit of a sand-paddle:
And then we both went for an actual paddle:
We were getting through the list of things that Eva wanted to do before we headed off so next on the agenda was the Upside-Down house in the Pleasure Beach Gardens. The house was at capacity when we arrived so I went back to the loos next to the giant wheel while Nathan and Eva waited. The walk took longer than I expected so by the time I was back, they’d been through the house and taken photos to prove it:
Also on the list was “cookie as big as her head”:
And more battered halloumi and chips. Nathan and I were still full from breakfast but Eva wanted her third portion of seaside chips in a 24-hour period. We wanted to try yet another eatery so I think we ended up getting takeaway from Fish & Grill, next to Golden Nugget (which is not an eatery, despite the name). There was a bit of a wait but that would have been the same anywhere at lunchtime on a bank holiday I think. It gave us time to plan our next step, which was to take yesterday’s pun to a new level, in the classic “one of my children” way of flogging a joke. Yes, Eva needed to fill her empty Fanta can with seawater so she could take the “fantasy” home with her.
I don’t really need to set out the logistical issues involved in this pun but you’ll understand why the eventual solution of taking her chips back to the car, having to squeeze myself in through the passenger door due to the very close parking and retrieving an old Coke bottle from under my seat seemed thoroughly logical. It wasn’t empty but I think it was “compilation Coke” from previous journeys so I wasn’t sad to see it poured down a drain. There was a totally empty bottle by Reuben’s seat but that was completely unpassable thanks to the blue jeep that was well over the line. So we filled a Coke bottle with seawater, promised her that we would find a Fanta bottle to put it into when we got home and jumped in the car before the torrential rain started. She hasn’t asked for the seawater since we got home but you’ll be pleased to know that the battered halloumi and chips all got eaten on the nearly 3-hour journey home,
Because turns out, Great Yarmouth is a trek from London even when you live at the exact right corner of London for all things East Anglia. I amazed myself by playing with Google Maps and finding that Great Yarmouth is the same distance from home as Bristol, Poole and Loughborough. That blew my mind cause Bristol is practically Wales and all the way over there. Poole is all the way down there and Loughborough is north of Birmingham, which sounds very far indeed. Norfolk is crazy big, turns out. But still worth a visit if you have to be there anyway and this whole crazy trip was a very pleasant 24 hours by the sea indeed. I’ll just pack a few more cardigans next time…
