NORFOLK TURKEY
And so we arrive in Norfolk, the home of a plethora of Piggeries. Turkeyeries too.  Do you know that the Victorians, apparently, used to walk the Christmas turkeys down from Norfolk...? It would take a couple of weeks to herd the flock of turkeys down to London- and obviously their little feet were in danger of wearing out on the roads, so- and this is the comedy part (though not so comedy for a Turkey walking to their certain yuletide platter, perhaps), they would wear little leather turkey boots to save their feet! Genius eh?

Incidentally, flock is the correct collective noun to use when referring to turkeys. Collective nouns are our new favourite thing. Most of us have heard of the gaggle of geese and many have heard of the murder of crows, but did you know that the collective noun for hamsters is a horde? Which conjures up some very satisfying images of masses of angry marauding ginger rodents. Gerbils also hang out in hordes  Also tickling our funny bones are a parcel of penguins, a rhumba of rattlesnakes, a hurtle of sheep and very best of all an implausibility of gnus.

Back to the task in hand: we went right through Downham Market without noticing, though we'd been looking forward to stopping to tell someone that we thought the whole area really had gone that way..

COLLECTORS WORLD
And thus we arrived at our final planned destination on this leg of the trip Collector's World.

This place is a truly eccentric exhaustive collection of anything you care to mention. There is more of everything than you can shake a stick at, along with 'The Magical  Dickens Experience' and a church full of eccentric treasures and ecclesiastical memorabilia - including a tapestry crafted out of something very weird (remind us what it is please) and the altar from Ely Place which is the only Catholic altar to be saved from the reformation. There is also a disturbing teddy bear's picnic, a year-round Christmas collection, many, many Victorian carriages, a hangar of 1920s/30s/40s cars, the largest tie clip collection in the world, Victorian shop front, prams, dolls, piles of bakerlite radios, piles of loads of things, a replica of the Virgin Mary's Ephesus Grotto and a few weird dummies sitting around. All opened by Barbara Cartland in 1988 - check out her pink room.  You name it they've got it 10 times over. Bring your coat if it's a chilly day- it is brilliant but very cold.

HERE IS THE CRUSHINGLY AWFUL NEWS- THEY'VE JUST CLOSED IT FOR RENOVATION.. AAARRGGHH, THEY DIDN'T MENTION
THIS WHEN WE WENT. SO GO AFTER THE 21^st MARCH or MAIL US AT info@gideonreeling.co.uk. IF WE HAVE ENOUGH INTERESTED PLAYERS THEN THEY WILL OPEN JUST FOR ROAD TRIP PLAYERS ON SUNDAY 15TH MARCH- THINK OF THE MANY MANY EXTRA POINTS THAT YOU COULD POTENTIALLY SCORE BY SNAPPING YOUR OPPONENTS.

The whole place feels like a Theatre installation, its run by Jilly and Keith and was such a wonderfully preposterous way to end our road trip. The discovery of yet another brilliantly eccentric, hidden beauty of Britain overloaded the senses and was topped off very sweetly by the discovery that they also have an animal sanctuary with meerkats and wallabies.. The Meerkats were not coming to the door on our day, which was a shame but we did meet a self-harming billy goat who was ramming his head on a fence post tirelessly.

And thus our week of road tripping came to an end with a damp drive back to London as the sun set over the flat flatness of Norfolk