Digby Visit (Part 2): Around Suffolk

After a pleasant evening drive through the Suffolk countryside, we arrived at the coastal township of Aldeburgh. Quite ‘Old World’, as Steve put it, and considering that there was a building that had been built in the 1500’s that was still standing on the beachfront, he was quite right. We timed our arrival superbly by just beating the rush on the Golden Galleon (the blue building in the middle of the picture above) - it was nigh on empty when we arrived, but had people queuing out in the street for tables by the time we left their Upper Deck restaurant. We pretty much rolled down the stairs as their serving size was quite generous. Far better fish n chips than Edinburgh, but that really isn’t saying much with that comparison. It was definitely the best fish n chips i’ve had since being over here.
To help things settle, we went for a short walk around Aldeburgh, before going for a drive further down the coast, and then heading back to Melton. On the way, we had a brief moment to check out the Snape Maltings and its famous school. We also drove past Eileen’s workplace, a juvenile prison, and managed to avoid a deer as it dashed across the road in the evening light.

Saturday started out with the same fine weather we’ve had for the past two days, so it was off to Felixstowe - another seaside township, and also quite a large shipping port. Another beach with no sand, but the usual pebbles. It also had the fairground, rides, amusement arcades, stalls, etc... and further down the coast it had hundreds of beach huts, sometimes being 3 deep from the beach. We chose here to have lunch at the Fish Cafe down by the ferry landing and fish markets (left). Another very popular place for its food (fish n chips, etc...) despite the fact that it looked like something that hasn’t been touched since the 1930’s. While the fish n chips did look (and smell) good, we opted for ‘sarni’s’.
A short walk around this little boating ‘village’, a stop at a roadside stall, a visit from some mods and their ‘blinged up’ vespas (below right), and we were back on the road again and continuing along the coast of Suffolk. Next stop was one of the local yacht clubs (below left). One of the biggest marina’s I’ve ever seen, and I’m told that this one wasn’t particularly posh, despite appearing that way by both the boats and the cars (or the fees needed to keep your boat here). The drive back home via Lewisham included passing an old saxon burial ground and the two small memorials to two of the prostitutes that were murdered in the region a couple of years back - you may remember seeing that on the news a while back, and it wasn’t an intentional thing to visit or see. It just happened to be in the forest we drove past. Driving about the Suffolk countryside in the nice sunny weather has been great to cruise through the small laneways that are bordered on both side by the forestry of the area, which creates it's own green tunnels at times. It does make it difficult to keep the mind from wandering, but the countryside is really different to what I know from home or have seen on TV.
A cruisey evening followed with the “boys” visiting the local pub, the Horse & Groom, to sample the locally brewed pints and to ponder the world’s mysteries, while the “girls” stayed home with a wine or few (and no, I didn’t leave out an ‘h’ there). As you can well imagine, dinner was a rather relaxed at-home affair that continued through several bottles of reds and whites to become quite an entertaining evening.

Sunday began rather slowly until everyone was up. The fact that the weather had turned to pelting rain was a good contribution to this slow start. However, us “boys” headed out on their own, while the “girls” did the same. We headed over to Bentwaters Airforce base, where Steve had arranged to visit a friend of his (Milt) who has a hangar there full of his fire engine collection. Once in the base, we stopped off at the Cold War museum. Suffolk appears to have been quite a hub of activity for both US and British military forces during the Second World War, and with Steve being quite an enthusiast on the subject we were getting to see a fair bit of it. The museum was quite interesting as it did document the entire cold war from beginning to end. I, like most of us, have an idea about the cold war considering that we grew up through its latter parts, but I learnt quite a bit how it actually began and some of the details of events that I ‘thought’ I knew about. It also gave you a look at one of the command centres that was housed on the base and used back during the early days after World War II. (above right)
Back out in the rain, we headed across the base to find Milt’s hangar, only Steve couldn’t remember exactly which hangar it was. Now you may think that this is a bit lame, but when you then drive around this airfield and base for some time in the pouring rain, you notice that there are dozens and dozens of hangars as well as many large buildings for storage. Most looked identical. And whether or not we should have paid attention to the sign “Restricted Area. Authorized Access Only” is something I’ll worry about another time...