Mousehold Heath Confusion

The original plan to walk between two WB Sebald exhibitions, from the Castle Museum out to the UEA, was abandoned. Emerging from the Museum, fresh afterimages were imprinted on my mind. Grainy scenes of Orford Ness and Sizewell sat alongside grim reminders of World War 2 concentration camps and colonial brutality. These were superimposed onto a liminal vision of the rural Suffolk coastal zone with its vast swathes of deserted beach and countryside peppered with strange wonders such as The Sailors Reading room and Somerleyton Hall. Into the mix flew the taxidermy seabirds in the Museum's natural history section. Not part of the Sebald exhibition but merging  into the images left by it they didn't seem out of place. In particular the absurdly grotesque large pelican, apparently shot by the Prince of Wales in 1802. I could imagine it instigating a Sebaldian diversion into an arcane and possibly fabricated tale of the Royal family. Pelican shooting as a relief from the day job of ruthless colonial surpression at the turn of the (19th) century.

It felt like a visit to the second exhibition might be a bit much to take in. The first needed to be properly digested. Instead we decided to drift to Mousehold Health, just North of the centre of Norwich. It was a place I knew little of, my expectations formed by a brief appearance on ITV Regional Television news and on a programme where Dr Alice Roberts visited the heath while discussing historic Norwich. It would be good to get to higher, more spacious ground and observe the city  from what I imagined to be a deserted grassy mound.

The heath is bifurcated by a road, which was the route we took. An earlier attempt to follow a path through a wood accessed via a promising looking gate, that looked like it would allow us to shadow the road unseen, was abandoned after it ended at a BMX/Skatepark. The road, trees either side, was a fast one and peppered with speeding cars and vans passing at irregular intervals. This slightly monotonous scene eventually opened out to one side. An ice cream van and a map board were signs that we had arrived at an entrance into the heath. Also in sight was what I took to be the pavillion shown on the map, a platform featuring a hexagonal or octagonal pointed roof, which is something I've always associated with the word 'pavillion'. The seemingly random piece of victoriana seemed to placed Tardis-like, as if providing a portal between the now and an imagined past.

Based on the presence of the 'Pavillion', we headed into the woods on the left hand side of the road, since the map had indicated the clearing Regional Television had planted in my imagination was somewhere just beyond it. The map also indicated several abandoned towers from an abandoned  brickworks at various intervals in the woods, adding intrigue.

The path/track we followed through the woods suddenly veered left and we found ourselves on a concrete path overgrown with brambles and budlia. On one side there was an apparently abandoned windowless building, part brick, part corrugated iron. It lurked behind a thicket if brambles. The broken warning sign hanging off the gate featured a simple exclamation mark on a yellow background. What it warned of remained ambiguous.

Opposite the building was a playing field, the other side of which stretched a long wall in front of a building which we took to be Norwich Prison. At the abandoned building, playing field/prison nexus it felt like we had shifted suddenly from an unremarkable but pleasant wood into a sinister peripheral zone. Our sense of direction, which we had previously felt certain of, became disoriented. The map board we had relied on to point the way suddenly made no sense. Checking Google maps, it seemed impossible the clearing could be this side of the road.

The concrete path went not much further before a dead end of brambles marked it's it's conclusion. Still disoriented and keen to extract ourselves from this zone, we retraced our steps and crossed the road.  On the other side was a diner, located in what looked like a former pub or house. Signs pointed to it indicating toilet facilities were also available. Up close there was no sign of a toilet block and the building appeared closed. The silence as I approached was uncanny. But upon opening the door I was greeted with the site of families gorging on burgers to a soundtrack of 'La Bamba' style Latin music. I closed the door again and the silence resumed.

Eventually we did reach a clearing on higher ground, covered in ferns and gorse, and heavily populated by dragon flies. It was as if we had crossed a line into the Jurrasic period. The clearing didn't look and feel like the one I had in mind. We sat on a lone memorial bench and had lunch. Upon checking Google maps again it suddenly became clear. The diner was the Pavillion, while what we had taken to be a Pavillion was a bandstand.  The diner lacked a 'pavillion-esque' roof or other features so had thrown us off the scent. It more resembled something from an American horror film, a creepy house in the woods. Things suddenly made sense. The confusion disappeared and the weird atmosphere with it. Soon after we left the Heath and headed back to lower ground via a long path hugging an allotment, which allowed a view of Norwich similar to the one expected but unseen from the Heath. A city whose outskirts required further investigation. But not today.

Telegraphs, Gas and Anarchist Hobby Horses in Norwich

Changing trains at Norwich, the plan had been to stop off and have something to eat at the Coach and Horses, and get a later train back. I walked down Thorpe Road but before I reached the pub noticed a footpath signposted as leading to Rosary Road. Beside being one of those paths that draws you in, Rosary Road rang vague bells. I took the diversion.

The path led behind some houses, on.hiher ground. Soon it forked. I took the left turn, shortly to emerge onto Rosary Road. The place was familiar and a few seconds later I saw the pub, The Rosary Tavern. I had been here before, some years ago following an afternoon at Norwich Beer Festival. I had stubled across the pub on a convulted walk back to the station by happy accident. It was mentioned in the beer festival programme as being 5 minutes from the station (I hadn't seen the ad until I was actually in the pub). It was only 5 minutes using the path I had just taken. But at the time went a different way, only having a vague notion of the direction of the station. It had taken 30 minutes.

The building was still there but on closer inspection it was no longer a pub.  A plaque on the wall showed it had closed in 2009, having been a pub for over a century.  The pub sign simply reads '95'. Above the windows, where the name of the pub had one been it now says, in wording just about visible, 'Rosary Appartments'. Serviced apartments I think. In the old days the pub had been part of a planned estate housing employees of the gas works. I was sorry to see the pub gone.

I made my way downhill back towards Thorpe Road, past the 60s low rise flats next to the pub and a semi-brutalist car park/office block opposite. Eventually I came to a left turn and headed to The Fat Cat and Canary for a swift half and a pork pie. It was sunny and the front yard was occupied by builders who had knocked off for the day and their vans.

Suitably refreshed, I carried on along the road for a bit before turning left, having decided to try and do a circular walk back to the station. I found myself on 'Telegraph Lane East'. The road quickly became a steep (for East Anglia) incline and a tree lined road with some largish houses. A bit reminiscent of Hampstead, but not quite as posh.  Late I discovered the area is known as 'Thorpe Hamlet'. Parts of it had a feel of a village within a town, a sort of separate state resisting the encroachment of its surroundings. Keeping the riff raff out.

I noticed a number of blue signs that I first thought pointed to cycleways. Coming from Cambridge, why would I think they were anything else? But they were signs for pedestrian routes, which is something you don't see everyday and was heartening. And useful for someone not really knowing where he was going. Up to a point anyway as most of the nomenclature was meaningless to me.

I passed a primary school, and notice one lone parent with a pushchair up ahead. No one else around. I crossed the road and saw up ahead what looked like a water tower. Closer inspection confirmed this. A water tower with an added bonus of a TV/radio or maybe mobile mast on top of it. It seemed unusual to encounter a water tower within a city. Victorian proto-brutalism at its best!

Further along the road seemed narrower and more like a lane. The woman with the child in a pushchair I'd seen earlier had paused ahead. When I passed she stopped me and asked if I lived round there. There was a starling apparently in distress, and she didn't know what to do. I apologized and said I wasnt local and didn't know the drill for injured birds except to advise her call the RSPCA. She thanked me but looked uncertain. I thought the encounter a bit odd. The woman was middle class and confident sounding but had no idea about what to do about her concern for the bird. I left the scene, feeling a bit guilty for not offering to call the RSPB, as well as puzzled as to why the woman hadn't thought of doing this herself. I was wearing a suit so maybe I was projecting some sort of air of importance or authority that I really don't possess. The encounter showed how deceptive appearances and first impressions can be. Anyone can buy a suit from M&S for less than a ton, and anyone can cultivate a middle class accent should they so wish (I never bothered). Both part of 'spectacle' and facade.

Shortly after this the road became 'Telegraph Lane West'. The lane narrowed and started its decline downhill. I passed a splendidly decrepit sign for a pub, The William IV'. I couldn't actually make out where the entrance was but seeing the sign for sports screens I  didn' investigate further.

Telegraph Lane West continued, tree lined and narrow.

I passed a metal gate, festooned with indicipherable graffiti tags. Frustratingly I couldn't make out what lay beyond it.

A little way further, near the end of the road I encountered a magnificent gas holder. A water tower and a gas holder on the same stretch of road, in a city, not in the 'edgelands'. I felt almost blessed.

When I got to the end of the road it was apparent that at some point it had changed from Telegraph Lane West to Gas Road. Stands to reason I suppose.

At the bottom on the corner was the Lollards Pit pub. Coincidentally I had seen the pub on TV a few weeks ago in a programme presented by Dr Alice Roberts about Tudor Norwich.  The pub is so named since the Lollards, seen as heritics, were killed and buried on the site which at the time was outside the city walls. The site was shunned for a period but these days the pub features most of the hallmarks of a thriving decent boozer with a heritage angle. Apparently there is a well in the garden (I didn't have time to look) and it had a fairly convincing old world feel, despite Jimmy Somerville pleading not to be left this way from the TV on the wall.

A bizarre flyer, featuring a ghostly looking hobby horse caught my eye. Robeet Kett led a rebellion in Norwich following the enclosures and resulting hardship caused the to people of Norfolk in the 1500s. He was hung soon after. Ketts horse, and the morris/molly troup accompanying it, appear to be harnessing the rebellious spirit of this part of Norwich which goes back through the layers of it's history. I hadn't detected much of a spirit of rebellion in Thorpe Hamlet but it was only Wednesday afternoon.

'No one man is the horse. We are the Kett's Horse Society. We are the Guild of the Glad Man Ribnoners. We are the resurrected skeleton army of Stump Cross. We are the stump cross Ex-Residents Club. We are the Now or Never! drinking club'.

Over the road, I found myself on the officially sanctioned Riverside Walk. A sudden shift away from the arcane memories contained in the Lollards Pit, and the odd combination of edgelands and Hampstead that was Thorpe Hamlet. Soon after the path forced me through the beer garden of The Compleat Angler pub and across the road to the Station and home.