HOLIDAY I have had one holiday plan in mind for years, but I rather doubt that it will ever come to be a reality. There are logistical, financial and and semantic problems involved.
I have been there before which may be the reason for delay and hesitation. Personal experience and that of others tells me that a second visit is never the same as that discovery visit years before. Perhaps its best to just put this plan aside and think of it as a trip which might have been a fine one.
The place is that waterway located in East Anglia, England just a few miles north of the city of Norwich, in Norfolk. The village is Wroxham.
It is best seen in Spring when the full,finest colors are in array and on display which is almost overdone. Every cottage owner seems to be bent on outdoing all others with flowers, shrubs, and trees of every type. You get the feeling you are visiting the place where artists find those ideal calender art pictures ...ornate, dipped in tinsel and good cheer.
Wroxham shares a portion of the River Bure on the south bank the other back a bit on the north shore. Hoveton, I've been told, meant "a hill near the water" and Wroxham meant " a place frequented by buzzards." It is, today, however, frequented by thousands of renters of other types of water craft. I would like rent a houseboat and spend a month or so leisurely visiting and revisiting coves of "The Broads. While I'm wishing for such a thing, I might as well include a fine laptop computer so I can get my writing done.
Wroxham also shows off what may well be the initial shopping mall arrangement for blanket merchandising of goods and services of all kinds. One of the first things I noticed when I first biked into Wroxham in 1944 from Salhouse-Rackheath way is that about eighty per cent of the real estate of the town seemed to be to be the private possession of one man named Roy!
Shop after-shop, pub-after-pub, store-after-store, restaurants, petrol points, beauty salons, insurance brokerages, boot repair ...everything! There was the neatly painted red wooden sign saying it , too, was: "ROY'S". The store started in 1895 and is still doing well, I understand. Alfred and his brother Arnold members of a family named "Roy" in the village of Coltishall not too far away, started buying up troubled business firms; and refurbishing them with the intent of making money. They are today a disjointed shopping mall, a department store with stocks spread out all over town, including any ship chandler's supplies you feel you need You can visit Roy's by rail, highway or water.
Anglia Railways serves Hoveton as a scheduled stop on their "Bittern Line". The narrow guage Bure Valley Railway runs between Wroxham an d Aylsham and during summer season and school holidays and summer season including "Boat Trains" which combine a narrow-gauger rail trip with a 90-minute boat trip. Off season they offer "Train Driving Classes"; you can buy or rent hiking equipment to take on the trails beside their tracks or camping out, or, a bike if you want to work out on the bike trails nearby. I'd like to vacation there if only to ascertain for sure if any of that is something that might now belong to Roy, as well.
A.L.M. May 14,2005 [c580wds]
