On Saturday, I got up disgustingly early (5am?!) and drove for four hours with a somewhat hungover passenger.  We ended up in Diss (and on a side note, the A14 is a very very boring road).

Obviously there was good reason for this - a weekend away with friends from Keele   Scarily, this July will mark 6 years since graduation, thus 6 years of camping trips, days out and sleeping on other people's floors.  All good.

I refused to do any more driving that day, but off we went to the seaside at Southwold.  Which has a pier.  Quite a nice pier actually - obligatory amusement arcade, but then the rest of it is nice little shops/cafe, arty bits, and a collection of crazy machines.  The weather helped too - lovely sunshine (but a cold sea breeze), and also the fact that it's not mega busy tourist season yet.

looking back to land from the end of the pier (it's a T shape)

An evening of food, drink, gossip and rock band followed.  Two lessons to be learnt here: don't take indigestion tablets with vodka, and always keep an eye out for people filming you singing/drumming/fake guitaring.  Oh dear.

Sunday was not as sunny, and the fountain in Diss Mere was switched off so no photos of that.
We headed for Thetford Forest, which has the most over the top forestry commission car park ever.  Automatic barriers, touch screen ticket machines, £1.90 an hour car parking charge (included on the list of 'things this pays for': access to free-to-roam land.  riiight). And not really much else, which was a bit disappointing!  We had a quick wander around the kiddies 'adventure play trail', and it started to rain.  So that was the end of that, and off home we went.

tags: England friends