A day of surprises along the road

It's Tuesday (well, really, it's Thursday, rainy and grey, but I'm writing about Tuesday !) and we reluctantly decide to leave the East Anglia area and head back to London but not without many stops along the way.  We know we want to go to Southwold (I think that's pronounced Suthold here) and Aldeburgh (pronounced Albrah), two picturesque seaside villages.  We had been to Aldeburgh years ago on another airfield quest and had the best fish and chips ever while sitting on the beach wall.  Wouldn't mind doing that again! Southwold had, by chance, been referred to us a few days ago by new friends, Ken and Vera, not knowing that at the time we were closeby.

I say we reluctantly left East Anglia because it's one of the most "comfortable" areas in England to me.  I said to John a few minutes ago that "if I had to live in England" (at which he chuckled - more about that later!), I would want to live in East Anglia because it's a slower pace, it's not as "touristy", and there's not an M road anywhere! But you can easily get to a cathedral city, Bury St. Edmonds, the shore and lots of historical and picturesque sights without the battle of others trying to do the same.  Or having to get out of London to start on another outing. 

On our way, with Southwold as our first destination, we were quite willing to take side-trips to anything we saw that might interest us which is why John managed a prompt U-turn when I said "There's a sign for Framlingham Castle!  Wanna go?"  Down the little curvy town streets we went following the signs that finally took us around a hairpin corner and BOOM there's the castle, hidden before and now in full view.

Framlingham is a 12th century fortress and was where Mary Tudor rallied her troops in 1553 to secure her throne.  If she hadn't, a lot of lives would have been saved, but that's history.  Despite the fact that the castle walls have been standing for 800 years I was still nervous as we did the wall walk - in the pouring rain!  Very English event. (I mean, what if they should suddenly collapse - I have gained a few pounds over here, you know.)

Many school groups were visiting and it was fun to watch their excitement as they learned the history of their country and how people lived in the castle and, for instance, retrieved their water from the well.

Knowing more about Framlingham now gives me a point of reference and a visual picture as I continue reading and studying the Tudor era that I love so well.  I am right now reading Mary Tudor, England's First Queen by the historian Anna Whitelock so I'll be right there with her during that phase of the book.  If you would like to know more about the castle (because we still have many places to go today) use this website.   http://www.castlexplorer.co.uk/england/framlingham/framlingham_links.php#maine

From there, we continued out of Framlingham through the beautiful countryside of rolling hills and fields of rape now sagey yellow rather than golden.  I suppose it has to go to seed before it's harvested and therefore eventually loses its brilliance.  I miss those patches through the fields and now what had become marshland.  We were in the Broadlands, an area of England we had not seen.   Suddenly I saw on the left of the skyline a magnificent cathedral and it's another "Turn around, John!  We have to see this!" moment.   Turning around meant losing sight of it but I was sure I saw a road signed "Church Street" which seemed a logical place to turn.  Still not seeing it but turning there, anyway, we found ourselves in a hidden muddy car park and the cathedral right in front of us.

From a distance, it had appeared to be a ruin.  In fact, I now recall John asking why we had to turn around and I remember saying "Because it's a ruin and we have to see it!"  Well, it wasn't a ruin at all - because it's clerestory windows were clear glass instead of stained, in fact all it's windows just about and you could see through them, from a distance, it looked like it had no glass just openings as if it were in ruins.  We had found the Cathedral of the Marshes in Blythburg.


Stunningly bereft of color, the interior of the church appears to have been whitewashed by the marshy air and deterioration of it's wood.

In 1577, a fierce storm and lightening caused the tower to fall and destroy the bells and the font and it wasn't repaired for almost 200 years.  With delight, we discovered that the end of each pew had a carved figure that had not been destroyed during the Reformation.  However, the large beautiful angels at the apex of some of the crossbeams were used as target practice and shot up.

There is a re-creation of one over the door painted in the bright colors that would have been there in the beginning.

We discovered a TINY circular staircase in the corner by the front door inviting us to go up to "the priest's room" restored in the 60's.

We curled our way up the tiny stairs into an amazing large room in comparison - probably about 14' x 14' - with an altar, several hand-made benches and large windows overlooking the front doorway.  There was also a peephole into the sanctuary but you couldn't see much other than some who might be entering.  The room was whitewashed and there was a coffee mug on a shelf!  We read that sometimes this is used as a chapel for weddings but I can't figure out how the bride could get up and down those stairs in any kind of a dress.  I could barely manage it in my jeans.

Outside, the cemetery had been designated a wildlife center which is apparently being done around many churches and cemeteries as open areas begin to disappear.  However, since this church yard was in the middle of a huge marshland, it seemed the only wildlife taking advantage of this space was the rabbits who had tunneled all over the cemetery.  In fact, we saw several scurry as we walked around.  Guess these rabbits won't have to worry about development like the ones in Watership Down!

Amusingly, there was also signage to toilets through the cemetery, down a wooded path almost into the marsh it seemed where there were two what appeared to be porta-potties but with flushing toilets and individual sinks!  I made John go in and look!

The signage made it clear that these toilets were meant for the public as well as church attendees!  Grateful public like me...

Off again to Southwold and not seeing major buildings like castles and cathedrals any more, we finally arrived in this delightful and once again colorful seaside village.  Broadstairs was colorful, we will find Aldeburgh to still be colorful, and Southwold continued this tradition.  By the way, speaking of colorful buildings, Suffolk County, the area in which we were in and had been in since Rattlesden, is known for its pink houses.  Suffolk pink it's called and it is suggested that when these cottages were being built in the 1500s and later that the materials available for building were chalk, sand and heavy clay.  For coloring, there was ox blood and sloe juice from sloe berries (had to do some research on that one!).  I'd heard about the blood for coloring, but not the sloe juice - from which you can make sloe gin which might account for all the men around Suffolk not being bothered about living in pink houses!  

Don't miss the thatched roof!  There are more of those Suffok than anywhere else we've seen this trip.

Anyway, many were also pargetted which was a method of decorating the exterior by slabbing on thick areas of plaster and carving flowers, animals, and other designs into it and then carving away from the outlines making the figures 3 dimensional.  Most we saw were quite beautiful and a testament to the pargetter's skills.

The first area we headed for in Southwold was the waterfront and we came across a long row of the beach huts some of these towns are famous for.

Then we headed to the harbor which is really more of a widened area in a river whose mouth wasn't far from us out into the sea.  The fishermen's huts and the fishmonger's stalls were opposite in appearance, being weather stained and drab but having colorful and delicious interiors of fresh fish and FISH AND CHIPS!

Yum - here we go again.  But since we were headed to Aldeburgh to relive my waterfront experience there with the fish and chips, we only ordered one serving.  That's a fried cod about 10" long sitting on a large bed of french fries, ooops, sorry - chips!  Very, very good and since we were sitting outside on the harbor, good competition for the Aldeburgh goal.  And there was competition for our meal as well!

After driving through the once again quaint and curving streets and seeing the pink and yellow, blue and cream houses and John longingly gazing at the Adnam's brewery which sits right in the middle of town, we decided to move on to Aldeburgh.

It's only about 30 minutes south unless you have another sighting - and this was John's turn (I was so proud of him!).  He spotted the ruins of an abbey off to our right and made a quick swerve onto its drive.  He had found Leiston Abbey, a gorgeous ruins of an abbey I had never heard or seen reference to.

Once again I stood in awe at the size and grandeur of what man had built to the glory of God.  In this case, you could only imagine what it might have looked like in its beginnings and why men would want to isolate themselves away from society and family to worship Him.  Good works need people to be done.

The clouds and sunny blue skies only added to the beauty of this place.  Our weather had improved greatly since morning but I could imagine that cold and rainy weather over these hills would make the abbey a cold and formidable place of self-sacrifice from worldly comforts. 

The day was slipping away from us and we wanted one last look at Aldeburgh and old memories.  Aldeburgh has a shingle beach.  That means that instead of sand, it's beach was of rocks and we wanted to hear that sound we loved so much of the rocks rolling over themselves as the waves went in and out.  Unfortunately, the tide was out and there wasn't a lot to hear.  I've tried to describe it before as a bubbling, frothy kind of noise but it's hard to do.  We knew we would have a long wait for the tide to come in enough to record it so we did the next best thing and went to the pub we had stayed at on our last visit, The Mill Inn.  (By the way, we decided today to start a list of pub names just for the heck of it and on our first day, we collected over 20 names of pubs we passed or signs we saw.  Wonder how long it would be if we had started on day one!)

The pub was very quiet in comparison to the night we were there when there was a wake celebrating the life of one of the lifeboat mates.  Aldeburgh is again an ancient town brought to prominence in the 1500's when a natural harbor began to form.  It is known for its lifeguard station that has been in existence for 180 yeaars.  One of their mates had died and they were celebrating his life in the pub they all frequented.  In fact, they were so rowdy that the publican came over to us and asked us to please not be afraid of them, they had just buried a mate and they were celebrating his life.  Since we had reservations to spend the night there, we decided we wouldn't be!  But Tuesday afternoon it was dead silent (not to coin a pun at this point!) and sort of boring.  We like it better lively!

It was time to do one last thing before we headed home - the fish and chips!  Now, you are thinking - you have already done that today.  Yes, but!!!  Remember we only ordered one serving in Southwold and that's all we are going to do here so all together we had one serving each.  The restaurant takeaway area opened at 5:00 and when we arrived just a few minutes early, there was already a line.  And of course we ate it on the sea wall along with all the seagulls who joined us! 

Our trip back "home" was  uneventful until we realized that Gertrude once again was going to take us the shortest route home rather than on the highways.  We were going through downtown London!  Poor John.  His driving skills are wonderful over here but it's not everyone that gets to drive in London down Piccadilly and past Harrod's.  Not too busy an area!! We hit the beer and wine when we got home at 8:30.