28th October 2016
Another easy day, although at least I did make a start as early as possible, departing Great Yarmouth at 09.30. It's possible to get from Great Yarmouth to Cromer on one bus - in fact the very bus that I was catching - Sanders Coaches service 6 (although to get round satisfy drivers' hours regulations it mutates into a 6A at some stage along the route). It doesn't however, follow a particularly coastal route and, in fact, misses out a large chunk of the "edge". This meant a change of bus and the only place this would be possible would be in the small village of Sutton.
Some timetables show the timing point in the village as "Post Office" whilst others just describe it as "Sutton". Traveline calls it "Elmhurst Avenue" and for once this is the most apt description as the Avenue is clearly visible, whereas of the Post Office there is no sign. I must admit that service 6 tuns inland fairly soon after leaving Great Yarmouth and there might have been other possibilities that followed the coast more closely, at least for the first few miles. But it was a reasonable compromise and, given the low frequency of the connecting service 34 at Sutton more-or-less the only option. This bus turned out to be by far the busiest of the day, with a healthy load leaving Great Yarmouth and still well-loaded when I left it at Sutton, having passed through the edge of the "Broads Country" at the boating centre of Potter Heigham, where we paused for a minute or two next to a huge hire boat base.
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| Mundesley |
I had 15 minutes between buses at Sutton with nothing more to do that wander aimlessly up and down the main (only) street, attracting suspicious glances from the locals until the next bus was due. Its destination was North Walsham, but at this point it would be heading back towards Cromer which is no doubt why the driver asked me where I was going. According to him - and I can well believe it - they get more than a few people boarding this bus but wanting to get to Cromer. At this stage I was the only passenger and things stayed that way for most of the journey. We picked up a hiker at Sea Palling, where the bus reversed just out of sight of the sea, and one or two others through Happisburgh before arriving at Mundesley where there was time for a coffee in a cliff top cafe followed by a walk around the village.
Buses on to Cromer ran every half-hour, but it was still only late morning so I took a side
trip - not counted in the statistics - down to North Walsham, somewhere I'd never been before and which turned out to be an interesting small market town albeit rather run down, no doubt due to the presence of a huge Sainsbury's supermarket on the edge of the town centre.
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| North Walsham |
The bus that took me back to Mundesley continued on to Cromer - and kept to the coast passimng the huge North Sea Gas terminal at Bacton and I arrived in the town mid-afternoon with time to drop off my stuff at the hotel and then enjoy a walk along the pier and round the town, getting caught in a rain shower - the first this week and only about the third or fourth of the entire adventure - just before getting back to my hotel.
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