Trifles make the sum of life

I've shown the old Customs House, the Purfleet and St Nicholas' Chapel (that's the spire peeking out in the background) before but they're worth another viewing this time from across the river. So what can I add? Oh yes, I remember now ... there's a new film out, some dire comedy based on David Copperfield, and the Lynn papers and media folk (for they are ubiquitous, even in Norfolk) are in a tizz that some of the film features the Customs House and it gives them a quite a frisson. Then last night the local, as in Hull, BBC news had a report featuring the same film and how it has bits of Hull in  it and doesn't that give you all a thrill (we don't do frissons in Hull) ... Bury St Edmunds also stars but we don't want to talk about that ... Oh go on then here's the trailer.

Castle Rising

Escaping from the conversations and chit-chats with people you don't know, have never met before in your whole life and will probably never meet again that followed Fred's funeral and declining the kind invitation to a get together with Fred's stepfamily for tea and ham sandwiches in a King's Lynn hotel, we made our excuses and left heading three or four miles out of town to this wonder: Castle Rising. Built in 1138 by William d'Aubigny this is one of the most famous castles in England or so say the people who run it. The gatehouse and keep are restored and in remarkably good condition and you can wander around inside (we'll keep that for another day). The embankments around the three baileys are also in fine shape and amazingly steep. 

This place is most famous for being the retirement home/prison of Queen Isabella after  she'd been deposed by her son Edward III in 1330 or thereabouts. Isabella, you will recall, had her husband, Edward II, murdered in a very particular fashion involving a red hot poker, she then set about ruling with her fancy man, Mortimer, it all ended in tears as it usually does ... she seemed to make herself quite at home here, making alterations to the buildings, running up huge debts and generally enjoying herself as any self-respecting mariticidal ex-monarch should; even her son, the king, dropped by for tea and scones.

Margot, who used to bicycle here as a youngster from King's Lynn, tells me of more recent goings on involving satanic effigies being nailed to the door back in the early 1960s, a sheep’s head with thirteen thorns stuck in it was also found... but I just call that NFN.

The weekend in black and white is here.

The old trade

King's Lynn was first and foremost a port, exporting grain, salt and wool to Europe and importing wood and pitch from Scandinavia and wine from our friends in France. While the import side may not be so grand exporting grain is still big business as witnessed the huge grain silos I  posted yesterday. This ship, the Arklow Castle, was bound for Bayonne and arrived there a few days after this picture was taken. The church in the background is St Margaret's.

Something quite old and something relatively new

In the centre foreground the little King's Lynn ferry has, in one form or another , been shuttling folk across the river for over seven centuries, since 1285 so they say. The service does not run on Sundays or Bank Holidays and the last ride is at 6.30pm. I must get round to trying it out sometime.

Looming in the background are the grain silos of the port of King's Lynn with a 25,000-tonne capacity storage along with drying and screening facilities. It seems, a few years ago, there used to be silos to the south of town that were considered an "eyesore" and have been demolished. These however are a soothing balm to the optics.