So I believe that since March I have walked (very approximately) 1,500 miles and completed over 3.4 million steps! That's almost the equivalent of a return walk the length of the UK from Land's End to John O' Groats!
My next aim will be the equivalent of walking across the Atlantic from Wales to the USA. Not sure how far this is but I do feel I might get a bit wet!
The above for some reason reminds me of two old jokes:
A man decided to walk 10 miles a day. After 10 days he found himself 100 miles from home.
A man goes into a railway station ticket office - "Could I have a return ticket please," he says to the booking clerk.
"Where to sir," replies the clerk.
"Back here" comes the reply.
Enough of this frivolity. When I'm in Norwich I like reading the blue plaques that are dotted around the City.
I found three of interest on the latest visit. The first on a large building at the top of Upper St Giles and this one reads "Sir John Mills (1908-2005) Oscar winner and star of over 100 feature films. Sir John Mills went to school here when it was the Norwich High School for Boys. Apparently he hated it and claimed, as one of his achievements, that he broke the school bully's nose." So even blue plaques have a sense of humour.
Not too far from that plaque was one to the historian Francis Blomefield which I found intriguing as, in my ignorance, I had never heard of this gentleman. So a bit of research was required.
Francis Blomefield lived from 1705 until 1752. He wrote a history of Norfolk and also many articles on both Norwich and Thetford. A quick search on Amazon showed that his books have been reprinted as part of a very interesting series of classic reprints.
I bought a couple of books in this series on the history of Great Yarmouth entitled the "Perlustrations of Great Yarmouth". These books are well worth looking up if you are interested in history as it's written i.e reprints of historic documents about history.
A third plaque that caught my attention and which I forgot to take a photo of was on a house designed by Matthew Brettingham in the St Benedict's area of the city. I have blogged about Matthew Brettingham before but his name has a definite resonance for me. My friend (and I suppose technically my family member) Laurie Brettingham is a direct descendant of both Matthew Brettingham the Elder and Matthew Brettingham the Younger. Both were world famous architects although the Elder was the most famous and had a big say in the building of Holkham Hall as well as many buildings in London.
Laurie is the father of the wife of my third cousin and celebrated his 90th birthday last June. We had a socially distanced get-together in a garage. Those were the days when you were allowed to meet with people at a social distance (do you remember them)?
One of the other plaques I came across was for the historic Britons Arms in Elm Hill. The owners have retired after over 40 years at the tea rooms. I featured some of the photos to go with this blog yesterday.
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Today's photographs were taken in Wymondham by Cousin Belinda who has a habit of tracking down various birds along the banks of the Tiffey.