Tag: king’s lynn

King’s Lynn Day 2

Day 2 would be my first proper daytime look around the actual town of King’s Lynn. Now, as is traditional with these days away, I pretty much have the first portion of the morning to myself. Chris would much rather have a sleep in than be dragged around the afore-mentioned establishments while I gawp over thousands of bits of plastic. Of course, that also meant it would be up to me to be on the lookout for other places of interest that may be worth visiting later.

A literal stone’s throw from the hotel was a charity shop called PACT. Something to do with animals. It looked like a charity shop just run by one person, a friendly old gentleman behind the counter. I picked up my first CDs of the trip, and went to find other establishments. Next door to this shop was a promising little boozer named “Nip and Growler”. We would have to explore that later.

One thing I can say about King’s Lynn is that everything is very close together. From the market square, you have the High St, which isn’t actually a street, it’s a walkway. Off that, you have the main shopping precinct named Vancouver Quarter, and that was pretty much it.

I attended pretty much every charity shop in the area that I can find. I did also find a nice record shop buried down one of the streets. Time was getting on, so I didn’t have the chance to look at it as much as I wanted to, but the guy behind the counter said he’d be opening around ten the next day.

I headed back to the hotel, and thankfully Chris was up and ready by this point. I shared my findings and headed off in search of ‘breakfast’. We headed off back down the ‘high street’ and settled for a place called ‘Eatwell’. It looked very much like one of your old fashioned cafes. Wood panelling half way up the wall. TV in the corner, playing “Homes Under The Hammer” at an inaudible volume, regulars in Hi-Viz jackets who knew the staff by their first names because they’ve been coming in since God’s dog was a puppy. I love these types of places. I ordered a sausage sandwich and a can of coke. Imagine my surprise when the sandwich also came on a plate with chips and salad. What is this voodoo? It was the greatest breakfast I’ve ever had in an establishment like this, and it was really cheap too. Can’t recommend it highly enough.

We had a little more in-depth look around the place, and found a second-hand shop that sold everything from ZX Spectrum games to vintage ‘calling cards’ out of phone box windows. Yes, that type. Again, this place would have to be put into the pile for a deeper explore later on, as it was time for us to jump in the car, and travel the 40-or-so miles to Norwich. That is, if we were to ever get out of bloody King’s Lynn. We made a slight wrong turning, and the SatNav sent us into the deepest, darkest bowels of some housing estate. That added 20 minutes on to the journey that we didn’t really needed.

We arrived in Norwich, and dumped the car into the first car park we found. Let’s just say the place was… uninspiring. It wasn’t what I was expecting. It seemed a more like Leeds than I was expecting. I’d have loved to show you more photos, but the only two photos I took there were of some VHS tapes in a charity shop that was closing down.

I did buy some stuff in the afore mentioned charity shop (might as well mention it, it was the YMCA which will be gone by time time anyone sees this) and I spent about 20 minutes in the queue because the person in front of me was buying half the shop, and certain items didn’t have a tag. How annoying. I just kept thinking “You’re closing in a week, just give him the bloody popcorn maker”. The things I bought weren’t even that good, the bones had been picked out of the CD collection, and I was mainly just getting CD case replacements. Just like the VHS tapes, these were 10p too.

I think it’d be nice to go back at some point and check out the “cultural” side of Norwich. Despite walking around for what seemed like hours, we’d barely scratched the surface, and there was much more to see than we’d been to. Oh well. Seemed a bit of a long trek for what we actually saw.

We headed back with the dulcet sounds of Simon Mayo playing on the radio. By the time we’d fought our way through the farm traffic and arrived back at the hotel, it was time to head off and see what else the nightlife of King’s Lynn had to offer. We, of course, attended the afore-mentioned growler place for a couple, then it was off to find a curry house.

Just along from the place we went to the previous night was one called “Rajasthan”, and I’m happy to report this place was lovely. It was much better than the place on the previous night. Beer was nice, food was delicious, and yes, I’m a ponce and I took a photo of my plate.

I know. What was I doing just ordering a madras? And why did I take a photo of it? Those are both questions that shall remain a mystery for ever, at least to you, my dear readers, but I’ll just say it tasted as good as it looked. A truly excellent meal.

We headed back to nip ‘n’ Growler, and I spent a good part of the night trying the 5% ales they had on offer. I assume this is where this photo of some amusing urinals came from.

Thankfully, by the time I staggered back to the hotel, the bar was still open, so I had one, maybe two in there. Turns out that part of the bar had mirrored ceilings…

I ended up going back to the hotel room and then promptly falling asleep in front of Duty Free. Let’s hope I woke up as fresh as a daisy for Day 3 as it was going to be a busy day…

Another few days away – King’s Lynn Day 1!

When you read this, I shall be home from a few days away in the pleasant town of King’s Lynn. As I type this, I’m getting ready to leave the hotel room for the final time. I’m sat with my tablet and wireless keyboard looking around the room for things to comment on. It’s a little dated, with crusty bits hanging from the top, but that’s enough about me, more about the time away.

Myself and Chris, my usual travelling partner for these days away, had originally planned to do this as part of my “stick a pin in a map and just bloody go somewhere” initiative last year, but as luck would have it, I got indescribably sick, and Chris had the sniffles, so it was postponed several months until this week..

I initially thought the whole trip was doomed to failure again, as we’d barely left Hartlepool when we ended u[ stuck in traffic. Some complete loser lost his trailer on the Tees flyover. I;d normally complain, but while this did add a whole 20 minutes to the  journey, it gave me the first opportunity for a photo. You should all know by now  how much I like my “grim graf”, this one was a winner.

You might have to click the original image for that one. Thankfully, as far as I can recall, the rest of the journey was plain sailing. I fired up my “trip away” playlist on Spotify. Unfortunately, I think I’d only managed to add about 6 songs to it, so that didn’t last the whole three days as intended. Instead we endured local radio. I was saddened to find that my favourite local radio station, Lincs FM, 102.2 had bitten the dust.

A quick blast down the A1, and our first stop was, coincidentially, Lincoln. A lovely little city where I’ve been before, but not for a very long time. There was also large portions of it I’d never seen before, such as the cathedral.


Of course, the most important part for me were… yes, you guessed it, the charity shops. And streetlights. I’ve not mentioned those on here for a very long time. Sadly, the LED onslaught has taken the entire fun out of everything, so you’ll have to forgive me for almost creaming my pantaloons at the sight of a Thorn Alpha 3, on original Thorn column and its almost makeshift-looking outreach arm. Phwoar. they don’t make them like that anymore.

Anyway, there was one thing I thought I’d learned about Lincolnshire. It was flat. Let me tell you, that it is not. If you want to visit certain places like the cathedral and the castle, it’s certainly an uphill walk. In fact, the route we took takes you to a place named Steep Hill. Annoyingly, I did take some photos of the ascent, but my phone thought it’d be a great laugh to convert these photos to black. You’ll have to make do with a photo at the top of Steep Hill.

Halfway up was a local beer shop. they still remain in their bag, so I’ve yet to comment on how nice they are. Of course, at the top of the hill is the cathedral, and it would be the first of several cathedral stops on this tour.

We made a quick pit-stop at a place called the Duke William Hotel. Amusingly, the guy behind the counter had relatives from Hartlepool. Us monkey hangers get everywhere.

Time was getting on, so we headed down the slightly less steep version of Steep Hill, which still gave me some good photo opportunities.


We went back to the car and headed onto our final destination, King’s Lynn, which would be our home for the next three nights.

There was, however, a moment that almost put the entire week in jeopardy. Somewhere along the A17. An amusing turn of events. We passed a service station and Chris took a wrong turning, heading towards Boston. It just so happened that I needed to do a toilet, so we attempted to pull into the service station, making a wrong turning on the way. Chris parked up, and on my way to the afore-mentioned defecation station, I stepped off the kerb… It wasn’t a normal kerb, it was one of those foot-high kerbs. My right ankle almost gave way. Thankfully, it didn’t, but I bet the bog in Starbucks wishes it had. Hoho. No photos.

That was it now. No more stops until our final destination. One thing I had never seen before, however, are fields and fields of daffodils. It’s funny, you see them in the shops this time of year, but I never thought that they’d be grown over here. Certainly, in the north-east we never have anything close to this. At least, not that I’ve seen anyway.

Anyhoo. Normally before we go away somewhere, I do a deep scan of the places on Google Maps / Street view, in order to get an idea of the ‘facilities’ that are worth visiting, namely the pubs, Indian restaurants and charity shops. For the first time in all of the times we’ve done these trips, I didn’t do that. I wanted it to be a surprise, especially seeing how long I’d waited to get here. The sat-nav eventually put us on the right road, and after only a few minutes after arriving in King’s Lynn it seemed like we were in the centre. A large market place, seemingly something that must have been around since for hundreds of years. The Duke’s Head hotel was to be our residence until Friday.

Of course, the first thing to do was to arrange parking. £15 per day, and if you left, you weren’t guaranteed a parking space back in. Still, it seemed cheaper than stayin in the market square, and probably more secure. The next job was to actually find the bloody car park. It’s not well signposted at all, and the location just throws Google Maps into a spasm. At one point, it announced we’d reached our destination, when this was clearly a council ran car park. Little did we know, that if we’d just walked down a side street, we’d have found it, and I’d have saved £2.50 for about 38 seconds parking. Hey-ho.

We headed into the hotel entrance at the back. Decorator’s sheets littered the floor. A smell of wet paint filled the air. Temporary LED lights hung from the ceiling. This looked like a hotel, but in the process of being regenerated. A workman pointed us to the right entrance around the corner. Remember that side-street? Yup, that’s when we discovered it.

Eventually we got through the right door. The reception and foyer area was very nicely decorated, with leather chairs and chandeliers everywhere. Very nice indeed. The receptionist was friendly, and after the correct parking charge was settled, we headed up to the room. It was. compact, but dated. The bathroom was spot on, but the room itself was flaking paint, along with chipped veneer on the desk. It’s also the first hotel room I’ve ever been in that doesn’t have plug sockets next to the bed. It’s 2025. People need to charge devices during the night! The only plug sockets were the other side of the room.

The view out of the window was quite nice, the view of a distant church, the name of which escapes me. Let’s just call it St. Jocky’s. There’s also some big silos behind too. I didn’t realise King’s Lynn had a port, but apparently that’s where they’re from.

As much as I liked staring out of the window, we weren’t going to spend much time in the hotel room. It’s all about the curry, beer, and charity shops. I fired up the tablet. Google recommended one called “The Curry Shop”. We got there, and it looked very closed. Thank you very much, bloody Google Maps. Fortunately, there was an Indian restaurant right next door that was open, named ‘Voujon’. Well, that’s what Google Maps tells me anyway.  We were the only people in there apart from the staff. Just like the hotel room, it was also small and compact.  the food was acceptable, but I’m sure we’d find better. It went on the “might revisit” pile.

Food was consumed, and it was time to actually find somewhere to drink. The first stop was “the Eagle”. Wow. If King’s Lynn has a chav centre, I would think this was it. The beer was awful, and I only had a Carling. I think we spent the entire time looking around just thinking “Yeah, probably should have picked somewhere else”. Think we ran out of there.

Next stop was the pub next to the hotel, the Maid’s Head. The footy was on, so we watched that. Can’t tell you who was playing or what the score was, as I was too busy shitting my brains out. Dunno if it was the curry, or that dodgy pint in The Eagle, but…. wow.

We headed out of there and went to the Wetherspoons for one, planning to have one at the hotel as well. The Wetherspoons was absolutely dead. More staff than punters. Mind you, it was a Tuesday night. We went back to the hotel bar for one, only to find it was closed, and it must have only been 11. Gosh darn it. Oh well, back to the hotel room, and after a couple of episodes of Family Guy, it was time to embark on Day 2…