Coastal capers 2008
Once again a group of MVPS members ‘capered’ across to the east coast for the May 1st Bank Holiday weekend, but this time the destination was Great Yarmouth which Ken and I had only ever visited on a day trip over forty years ago!
The journey started in chilly and rather eerie mist with visibility considerably limited but as we travelled eastwards this cleared and the temperature rose slightly. Our party of three vehicles had an excellent journey with a couple of stops at Peterborough and East Dereham and finding the Furzedown Hotel was simple thanks to the map Phil had provided. Once parked up and unpacked we enjoyed a walk along the promenade to the pier and also looked around the pedestrianised shopping area and were pleasantly surprised at both the cleanliness and the attractiveness of the town. The Council has obviously been putting a lot of effort into modernising it and, in fact, the owner our hotel, the Furzedown, was almost at the end of his term of office as Mayor having completed 440 engagements in 365 days! Not only that but he is a member of the lifeboat crew and on a couple of occasions has actually been called out during his Mayoral duties! All this as well as serving breakfasts and evening meals to everyone at the hotel!
When we got back to the hotel we were very sorry to learn that the Morris Minor group had been held up for several hours by a jack knifed lorry on the A14 and that once the police turned them round they had had to negotiate congested roads through towns and villages, arriving at the hotel just in time for the evening meal.
The party found lots of attractions to visit including a steam museum where we were entertained for a while by a young lass playing a Christie cinema organ; a transport museum along the lines of Crich where we spent several hours travelling on a trolley bus, a single deck Dutch tram, a double deck tram and a narrow gauge railway; a car boot where several bargains were found; an excellent crazy golf course; several amusement arcades; a Victorian penny in the slot arcade plus several fascinating museums. There were road trains and horse drawn carriages to transport people along the front and several caperers took the bus to Lowestoft while the cars had a rest in the hotel car park although a tarpaulin cover would have been useful to protect the vehicles against the pigeons that regularly landed in the surrounding trees!!
Gradually over the five days we were there the weather improved with the temperature rising into the mid twenties by the time we journeyed home.
Bill Stewardson showed off his updated MVPS T shirt listing the various resorts visited since capering began back in 1990 and we hope that the tradition continues for many years to come. We cannot guarantee the weather but we can guarantee the weekend is spent in excellent company.