A total of 28 scarecrows will be all over the village and I popped down to the village sign to take a photo of the two primary schools head teachers Jem Brereton and Matthew Parslow-Williams. Mr Parslow-Williams had his son Noe (pronounced Noah) with him and the scarecrow went by the name of Jake. Enjoy the photo.
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It was an interesting journey down to Dover to catch the ferry. For once the M25 didn't live up to its title as The Road To Hell. There was relatively little traffic. Of course if this was the 1960s it would have been described as very heavy.
Every trip from Norfolk seems to stop at Birchanger Services on the M11. I think it must be compulsory. Today it seems to have been taken over by Starbucks.
The funniest thing was a series of washing machines just off the car park. Who takes their laundry to wash at a service station?
I almost wished we had brought a couple of duvets with us just so the machines didn't feel too lonely.
One of our party who is slightly off the wall used to be well known in the king's Lynn area of Norfolk. He told me he used to be in fear of Eamonn Andrews jumping out of a bush at him clutching a large red book. You will have to be of a certain age to understand that one.
The traffic was so light that I felt quite deprived. That's because I was so engrossed playing yahtzee against player 8746589A that I missed going over The Queen Elizabeth Bridge and seeing the industrial side of the Thames. I almost felt short changed although thanks to inflation small change is pretty worthless.
Then of course we got within half a mile of the port at Dover....and we got stuck.
Some times I despair when red tape causes delays. We sat on the coach, then we sat on the coach, then we sat on the coach some more. Then we got off the coach to have our passports checked. Then we sat on the coach some more. Then we sat on the coach in a car park while they decided what to do with us. Put together with the hassle we had at Naples Airport recently and I'm beginning to see why staycations are attractive - sitting in motorway traffic jams.
We were booked onto the 2.30 ferry. By 4 pm we were still sitting on the coach with the possibility we might or might not get the 5.30. Then having had our passports checked once, we had to have them individually scanned again. Oh the joys of travelling.
At times I really do feel that our country is grinding to a halt and nobody is doing anything about it.
Thankfully there was a lot less hassle in France and it didn't take us too long to reach our hotel in Ypres in Belgium.
Ypres is a strange name. The French pronunciation is Eepre. The Belgium's call it eeper and the Brits in the war referred to it as Wipers. So more about that tomorrow.