Flat is a series of pieces on some trips I made into the heart of East Anglia with a little bit of music listening thrown in for good measure along the way. This is the fifth part of what will comprise seven posts and it covers my trip up into Norfolk to visit the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham.

Walsingham is a village in Norfolk where there are shrines to the Virgin Mary following a series of visions experienced by an Anglo-Saxon noblewoman in 1061. It was a major place of pilgrimage in the middle ages until its destruction during the time of the Reformation, at the beginning of the 20th century the shrine was revived and it is once again a popular place to visit, primarily but not exclusively, for Christians.

It was a sunny Monday morning early September when I set off in my Prius to drive to Norfolk. Up until a couple of years ago Monday mornings would have been a different kettle of fish, back in the time before we pulled the plug on Wisdom Books, the small company where I had worked for the last 27 years, when I still bought into the daytime illusion that business was the meaning of life. I had originally planned to go to Walsingham a few months ago, back in June, but on my way up I had changed my mind just past Swaffham on the A1065 and ended up in Cromer instead, a seaside town in north east Norfolk where there was a curious mix of tourists and down at heel locals for me to view, a considerable number of whom appeared to be  either on medication or drugs. Or maybe it was me who was on the drugs, just seeing things strangely after nearly three hours driving.

I stayed in Cromer long enough to have fish and chips by the sea before getting out of there, later in the day ending up in Felixstowe, home to Treasure Chest, a second hand bookshop from where I picked up a paperback copy of a book called The Tantric Tradition for the princely sum of three quid. Clearly on that occasion my need for redemption or whatever it was you are supposed to get from shrines, fizzled out along the way. Maybe I shouldn’t have played the music quite so loud on the Prius sound system whilst going up. Music by the way, which had been some high quality, firing on all cylinders Def Leppard by way of Def Leppard, their 2015 eponymous album. This time around there was no doubt I would make it, if only to see what it was all about, shrines to the Virgin Mary in the fields of north Norfolk and all that, with no need to participate any further if I didn’t feel so inclined.

Continue reading “Flat: Norfolk Shrine” →