A holiday cottage loo

Well, it seems only right that this is the first room I share from where we stayed in Norfolk last week. That’s another thing that 2020 has brought, or rather not brought, as there’s been distinctly less loos to share, if you know what I mean.

But this one is a stunner, though somehow I’ve managed to completely fail in having a picture of the high level cistern. I used to have one, though not as fancy, in my old house and there’s a definite knack to flushing first time.

I told you it was a stunner, didn’t I?

I quickly fell for the green, and the plumbing.

There were plants throughout the whole cottage, but these heart shaped succulents were my favourite, I think. Though the money plant brought back good memories of a much larger version, which lived on the doorstep in my old house. Well, it did until one day when it wasn’t there anymore - for a five foot plant to disappear into thin air was quite something.

The cottage had a fab looking shower, and bath - which we didn’t really get time to use. The one day we did, it was raining so much outside that spending more time in water, wasn’t top of our list.

It was the small touches, throughout the cottage that really made it work. Truly inspiring.

And thankfully, I still had the knack of a high-level cistern. I think it’s the prettiest I’ve seen for a while.

Browsing an actual shop

I know, what a novelty. Last week we were away in Norfolk staying in a beautiful, but tiny, cottage close to Holt. More on the cottage another day, it was stunning. But then again, so is Holt - it’s one of my favourite Norfolk towns. We’ve only been to Norfolk three times this year - thanks 2020 - but hadn’t managed to get over to Holt, until this visit. It has some great shops, and it felt almost decadent to be in them, looking around, albeit with face coverings and social distancing, of course.

So today, join me for a wander around the shops, and see what caught my eye.

Holt has plenty of small yards, which are packed full of shops to explore, and we started in Follyology, a new-to-us shop, both of us drawn in by the garden ornaments. The wall art below was very well strategically placed, and caught our eyes. It is stunning, and realistically priced at about a hundred pounds ( I think from memory - sometimes it’s good not to know, or remember, isn’t it?)

From what was on display outside I was keen to see more of the shop inside. That didn’t disappoint either. It was full of colour.

As well as items which I’d not considered before, like these pretty ceramic teaspoons,

Downstairs there were homewares, upstairs clothes and accessories. And it was the latter, on a table in the centre that was my focus, with a number of decorated velvet pouches.

I resisted at the time, but resistance was futile and a day or so later returned to purchase one of the small pouches - you might have already seen which one on Instagram?

Feeling more normal, despite the masks, next up was a wander around the nearby streets and yards, and a pop in to Bakers and Larner’s food hall for something for tea. Another fabulous shop, which seems to have a never-ending series of departments, though in Covid-19 times there are designated entrance and exits, as you’d expect, but which made me realise I knew more of the shop’s layout than I realised.

Around the town I spotted a couple of penguins in one of the shop windows. Clearly not real ones, but they were rather cute. I think MOH was glad these weren’t the things we popped back to Holt for.

Well, not that time anyway.

Maybe my attraction to Holt is its colourfulness, maybe its quirkiness, who knows?

But what was clear was that it felt good To be back, even just for a short while.

Colourful beach huts and houses

My view is that you can’t beat a bit of colour, and that’s just what we got on a walk along the beach recently. There were pastels and stripes, patterns and bold colours, every which way, beach huts and houses, and today here’s just some of them, in case you need a burst of colour - I’m pretty sure that whatever colour you want, you’ll find here somewhere.

Whether it’s pastel stripes, or the more bold bronzed effect next door.

Maybe something more subtle, with a blast of teal topped off with an orange crab? Or a more creative approach with this geometric pattern of green, yellow and pink, which despite it’s zaniness is actually one of my favourites.

It was great to look along the row of beach huts and get that blast of colour, the blue skies helped too.

But it wasn’t just the beach huts. The houses which edged the beach walk were getting in on the colour palette too. I liked how they didn’t match, but didn’t clash either.

Further along things got a little bit more flamboyant, which some pebble art incorporated into the bay window. The pink railings were a winner for me, the drainpipe less so though (in case you were wondering)

Each of the pebble art in this row of houses depicted a different fresco, which meant I walked along this stretch of beach path looking left, instead of towards the sea, or even ahead. Buy you can see why, can’t you?

We walked to the end of the path, which had turned to boardwalk somewhere along the way, and ended up retracing our steps for the last section, before heading inland to return to the town. As we did the weather started to turn, but even so this pretty passionflower shone, and reminded me I no longer have one of these - another to add to my plant list!

Even the now greying skies couldn’t detract from the pretty-coastelness of the white painted fence and clap-boarded house. Just like our walk in the woods more recently, this trip to the coast filled a longing, I wasn’t even sure I had.