GeoGuessr (Norwich Version) – Walk 2

I already have a better explanation (well, longer explanation anyway) for this plan. In essence, whilst lockdown is on, I need to find ways of walking nearby to Norwich in quiet areas for my LDWA 100 training. So, I’m using GeoGuessr to pick out five random locations within a certain area which I’ve defined and then walking to them, to see what kind of story I can uncover.

So, this was the second of these walks, this time Nathan was dragged out to walk in the dark. We were using a map which used the ring-road as our limit, simply for time reasons, although we did manage to get the B&Q right on that line. Tonight’s little expedition was 11.2 miles, in the rain……

This was the start of the walk, there really was no beginning to our bravery tonight…..

Once we had summited Gas Mountain, we had a little rest and looked back down towards the city of Norwich, nestled in the foothills. We had walked around thirty metres at this point.

My local voting station. How lovely.

The Gordon pub, which I haven’t visited for a while, it’s a reasonably popular community pub though.

And we reached our first location. We didn’t make much effort to match the photos up exactly, life’s too short…. Well, actually, it doesn’t seem too short to do this walking thing, so perhaps we could have made more of an effort.

Past Thorpe St. Andrew School and I had a look on Wikipedia to see which former pupils went there. There are four listed and I haven’t heard of three of them, but I have discovered that Ben Bradshaw MP went to school there.

In the diminishing light we strolled into some woods, which wasn’t perhaps ideal. The inaugural tree at Queen Elizabeth II Woods was planted by Chloe Smith, another fascinating fact that people should know.

The second location, which wasn’t lined up at all, primarily as I didn’t want to stand outside someone’s house at night taking photos.

Nathan had just spent thirty minutes complaining that he couldn’t get his phone to display the map, so I led us efficiently during that time. In a crisis, I’m always calm and reassured. Then Nathan, after a fit of pique, announced that he had worked out how to turn his phone on (or whatever he was faffing about doing) and he would lead us. So, here we went, entering some park with minimal lighting.

The “please consider” is perhaps in vain, the careful and caring dog owners would anyway, and those inconsiderate ones won’t. Always worth a try though, passive aggressive signs can work.

Remember I mentioned that Nathan was in charge of navigating? He found the muddiest path in Norfolk to walk down in Norwich City Centre, which isn’t generally known for its muddy paths. I didn’t complain though.

After walking miles through a sea of mud, we decided that a road might be nice. This is the Norfolk Regiment War Memorial, located near to Mousehold Heath, and I’ll take a better photo in the day as this warrants that.

The Rishi Indian, which was the Duke of Norfolk pub between 1938 and 2009, re-opening as a restaurant in 2011.

We then popped into the Co-operative, and their beer selection wasn’t entirely dreadful. But, I wasn’t sufficiently tempted and I couldn’t be much bothered to carry it. Tonight didn’t feel like a drinking night, although I suspect the next walk might well have a few craft beer delights along the way.

I could though be bothered to carry my five custard doughnuts for 21p that I found in the reduced section. Not that I had to carry them for long if I’m being honest, they were very moreish.

Nathan, who is much more decadent than me, splashed out 34p on sausage rolls. We had been intending to get chips, but this seemed satisfactory under the circumstances.

The third stop was the B&Q car park. It’s not ideal is it? But, we have to get walk training in for the LDWA 100, so this is as good a place as any. There were a fair few people around at B&Q, but we couldn’t much complain about that whilst standing in the middle of their car park. On the bright side, we walked past nearly no other pedestrians, just a few joggers.

Walking back into Norwich city centre, these are the houses looking out onto St. Augustine’s Church.

Our fourth location, which was sort of lined up, this is St. George’s Street.

I faffed about taking photos of this willow tree, located by the River Wensum.

St. Andrew’s Hall and Blackfriars’ Hall, the scene for one of my highlights of the year, Norwich Beer Festival held at the end of October every year. Fingers crossed that this year’s can go ahead, I’m missing doing my annual volunteering effort at glasses and tokens.

Tombland road works, there were toilets here, but they’ve been removed. I had expected the council to be building another car park, but they’re creating some open space (which will likely happen to have cars parked on it if the council get their way). The council spent some money a couple of years ago putting in traffic lights for cyclists, but they’ve been ripped out.

And our fifth location and we could have had much worse than Norwich Cathedral Close which looked rather beautiful in the fading light. Incidentally, it was actually pretty dark, my phone was in night setting and the images look much lighter than the reality.

St. Ethelbert’s Gate, built in 1316 and still maintaining its beauty.

And I couldn’t resist a photo of Norwich Cathedral, taken from under the Erpingham Gate.

That concluded this little adventure, which we did at quite a fast pace. Given how quickly the whole evening went, it’s given us some more confidence about the 100, that if we can just gossip and complain about our friends for 40 hours or so (this is quite likely) then we might just get round. Well, maybe.