This has been the week of slow starts - we’re waking up around 7:30 but having our own kitchen had meant that it’s tempting to have a coffee and eat slowly, which is quite nice. Today started similarly and we didn’t get in the car until about 10 - after a little walk around town to get some coffee. We also popped into a cute little wine/produce shop on the main street and checked out their supply, which included some English wines from Norfolk. As we headed off towards Norwich, Peter looked up a couple and found that one was right by the brewery that we’d been planning to go to this afternoon, so we put that on the itinerary as well. 

It was only a 25 minute drive into Norwich and we easily found a car park in a big parking complex.  We walked through the middle of town, admiring the Tudor building mixed in amongst a whole lot of churches - the vibe of it reminded me a bit of Adelaide! Our first stop was an outdoor market and as we arrived there, we spotted an ice cream vendor. Peter’s been wanting an ice cream for ages (we can always hear an ice cream truck from our place!) so we headed across and were pleasantly surprised to find vegan ice creams too! I got a choc mint ice cream and Peter got a caramel pecan one. They were delicious and it was lovely walking around in the warm weather with an ice cream. We wound our way through the market and checked out some funny little shops before making our way through an arcade towards the castle. At the far end of the arcade we found an art store which had Marvel paintings and a whole bunch of artists that were the same as the art store we’d seen in Liverpool - turns out it’s a franchise of the same store! After having a look around in there (and noting down to look up an artist called Scarlet Raven whose stuff looked interesting) we came out of the arcade looking up a steep hill to the castle. 

Unfortunately the castle is closed at the moment, but we admired it from below for a moment - a very boxy castle compared to the standard ‘turrets and walls’ affair - before continuing our walk around castle hill. We made our way to the Cathedral quarter, where we found the stunning gates leading in to the cathedral complex. The cathedral towered over the buildings around it and we were surprised to find that it was free entry into the cloisters for a look around. We did a loop of the cloisters and then followed the signs around to the side of the church for entry into the cathedral itself. It was enormous and very impressive, but otherwise we moved through fairly quickly and appeared out the southern door. Nearby this door we found Edith Cavell’s grave, which had a quote from her and was surrounded by lavender and rosemary. From there we made our way back through the other gate to the precinct and along a street called ‘Tombland’. For such a strange name, it was fairly nondescript, with some cute restaurants and beautiful old buildings but nothing to justify the crazy name! 

After walking along Tombland we walked up a nearby street and found ourselves at BrewDog Norwich, as we had to get a stamp for Peter’s BrewDog passport. We ended up sitting down there for lunch and I got a great chicken salad and Peter had some loaded fries alongside a beer. When it was time to leave and we were chatting to the guy behind the bar while getting the stamp, he told us all about how he used to work for Cirque du Soleil but due to COVID had to come back to Norwich, where he grew up. He gave us some tips for things to see around town - including mentioning an underground street below the castle! As we left and googled this, we found that unfortunately it required guided tours and there were none available anytime soon. Nonetheless we went for a little walk around, heading towards a shop that I’d mysteriously had tagged in my ‘want to go’ list on google - although I can’t remember putting it there or why? When we got to the shop it was not only closed but entirely vacant! So the mystery was never solved. From the mystery store we walked up an adorable street called Elm Hill with lots of cute little stores and old Tudor-style buildings. We followed this street up towards the car park, where we followed the BrewDog guy’s advice and went up to the top floor to admire the view. It was nothing spectacular but was pretty - and definitely reinforced how many churches there were! 

Back in the car, we headed down towards Flint Winery, the winery we’d spotted in the shop this morning. It involved mostly freeway driving but plenty of tiny wiggly roads as we got closer to the winery.  It was a pleasant surprise as we turned up the road to spot a sign pointing to Ampersand brewery, a brewery we’ve heard of and tried some beers. When we pulled up at the address, we found that both Flint and Ampersand were part of the same complex! We visited Flint first as they were closing at 4 (and it was about 3:30) and were pleasantly surprised again to find they were offering tastings - everywhere else has been putting aside those sorts of services for the moment. They had a small tasting menu of a Bacchus, Silex Blanc, Pinot Noir Précoce and a sparkling Charmat Rosé and we ended up coming away with a bottle of the Silex and the Pinot Noir because they were lovely! The Bacchus I’d never heard of before and the woman compared it to a cross between a sav blanc and a Riesling, which I thought was fairly on point, while the Silex was more like a chardonnay.  We had a great chat to the woman who’s married to the winemaker - he left his career in IT to study winemaking and they subsequently lived in Beaujolais in France for 5 years before coming back to England to start their own winery. It was a great story and they were a great little winery! 

Next we popped by Ampersand for a couple of beers. It turned out that the brewery and the winery are both on the land of a farmer who has financial stares in both of them - he’s the business partner of the winery, and his son started the brewery. We had a chat to the guy working in the brewery, which was a much smaller space, and he mentioned a cute pub nearby that’s functioning as their taphouse at the moment. Then we were back on the road and headed towards Grain Brewery, our original planned destination. They had a very strict drive-through policy in place so we just had a brief chat to the girl on the desk before picking up our order and heading off again. It was on the way back to stop at The Cap in Harleston, Ampersand’s taphouse, so we stopped over to check it out. The town was absolutely gorgeous, with the little bunting flags that denote a real market town, and quirky little shops up the high street. We found The Cap easily and popped inside for a chat to the owner as well as a drink. I had a really nice raspberry lemonade and Peter tried a milk stout that they’d run out of at the brewery. They really did have more there than at the brewery, as the guy there had said! We managed to walk away with a free  Ampersand glass as well, which Peter was super excited by. 

From the pub it was back on the road to Wymondham. Once we got back we had a bit of time to sit and rest before heading up the road to a restaurant where we’d made our dinner reservation. Number Twenty Four was a converted house that they were clearly trying to convey as a fine dining restaurant. This was slightly undermined when the waiter was in his early 20s and couldn’t recommend a wine from the list, but the food was beautiful. They had set up a two or three course menu, so I had a crab and salmon salad for started and Peter had a smoked duck breast, both of which were fantastic. For main I had a guinea fowl dish, and Peter had an enormous slab of beef. They were both great and after initial hesitations based on the waiters we were really impressed. We were supposed to be doing the usual Thursday Zoom movie night with Peter’s cousins Rachel and Stu but they’d had stuff on so afterwards we just watched some more of the Great.