A sunny spring day saw us on the top floor of a double decker cruising cross-country past gilded fields of rapeseed. We were on our way to Loddon, a picture postcard market town of 2,500 souls, ten miles outside Norwich at the headwaters of the Norfolk Broads on the River Chet. We had a taste for a speciality brew and a clotted cream fancy in the Vintage Tea Rooms at the Eighteenth Century Mill, quite the thing to do in these parts. Neat and tidy Loddon is stuffed with quaint little Georgian and Victorian buildings lining its gently winding high street and is dominated by the fifteenth century Holy Trinity Church set in a sea of tombstones. The town also features the smallest fire station I’ve ever seen with room for just a single truck and no fireman’s pole to slide down.
We made it to the Vintage Tea Rooms, only to find it locked up with the following message:
โClosed for 2014โ
We got the bus back to Norwich and went to the pub instead. Every cloud…
Oh, really! Closed for the whole year? How very sad. I adore cream teas…
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Seems so. I’ve since read the owners (a gay couple, I think) have moved on to pastures new. Shame.
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Fun post. At least the sun was shining…sad about the heads being knocked off so many times…no wonder they take year long holidays!
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Yes, it was rather sad but I admired their gumption!
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. . it was, perhaps, the pressure of all roads leading to Lodden!
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And then out the other end ๐
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I had a quick panic at the title – thought you were closing up shop for 2014.
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Takes more than a missing French fancy to get me off the menu! ๐
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What a shame – looks so scenic though, hope the journey was enjoyable ๐
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It was nice diversion from city life. We plan to do more of it as the weather improves and hope more will be open for business! ๐
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