Even on my days off I’m still wide awake early. Well I have to be to give Nico his first dose of heart medicine for the day.
So after going back to bed for a couple of hours, and then having a relaxed first mug of coffee I decided Dolly and I were long over due a “proper” walk.
After getting our stuff together and in the car we were on our way to somewhere undecided. Yep what seems to be our norm, no set destination, decision made enroute.
All I knew was I wanted to avoid honey spots such as the coast, possibly Thetford. It’s the start of the school holidays and I just wanted to avoid the holiday crowds.
Dolly and I somehow found ourselves in the Roydon Common car park.
I set us the target of finding out what the mystery structure was that we have seen in the distance in Grimston Warren during previous visits.
We were going to cut out doing the upper fields and head straight to our target.
Our path across the common was the “high” path that Dolly and I originally tried taking back in February. However we had to turn back and use the lower one because of grazing ponies.
You’re not more than 20ft higher than the bottom of the common as it runs along the boundary of the nature reserve. But still you get a nice view across the common it as you walk the length of the common.
Being on the “high” ground meant that when we crossed the bridle way between nature reserves we remained on the “high” ground as we followed the edge round towards our target.
In parts it felt more like an animal track we were following with heather scratching my calves and probably whipping Dolly in the face. It was hard to tell with her walking behind me on this very narrow track.
But we did make it to our objective.
It turns out the mysterious structure that had teased us from a far was in fact a WWII military observation tower.
Less than a stones throw from the observation tower are a couple of information boards. One handily pointed out one or two of the structures I could see in the distance. Such as the ruins of Bawsey Church and QE Hospital wind turbine.
It was by these information boards Dolly and I stopped for a bite to eat snd and a brew.
My stove today was a newly arrived MSR Pocket Rocket Deluxe. It worked really well with the Jetboil 1.5L cook pot. I like this combo.
Once again the caffeine fix was the British Army freeze dried coffee granules.
While Dolly had her usual walk treat of beef jerky, I had some ramen.
I did get a little fancy using a sea to summit folding bowl, and a Boundless Voyage titanium Chinese soup/ramen spoon! I also added some dried shrimp this time.
One thing I learnt from the information board was directly below us were the remains of a Victorian tram line.
From our vantage point it was obvious where the path of the tram line had been. I could also see what looked like possible remains of the line itself.
After packing away Dolly dropped down to investigate.
The two pieces we had spotted did indeed look like rusted tram line.
I can guess that the tram line went to Kings Lynn. But where did it go to? Maybe one day I’ll be curious enough to look into this bit of Norfolk history to find out.
The remains of the tram line bought us out at the junction that Dolly and I took that lead us the bog bashing on our first visit here in February.
We headed back towards Roydon Common. Once there we took the lower path across the common with the “higher” path on our left.
About three quarters of the way long a deer ran out from the heather ahead of us, across the track, and into the heather the other side. I think the deer was a roe deer. Dolly was oblivious to this, or if she had seen it didn’t care.
Back at the car we packed away our gear, got in and headed home.
It was nice to be back out enjoying nature, the weather was perfect, we got to destress. Just what the doctor ordered.