What I did...

on holiday. Of course.

Readers of this blog will not be surprised to learn that I painted some little metal chaps:

These are some Perry AWI British 17th Dragoons, who will join forces with the mounted Loyalists of the British Legion, once they've received a coat of matt varnish and some flock for the bases. 

The building, also painted this holiday, is from Hovels' Northern Europe range.

But I also wandered from the painting table to the small towns and villages, the salt marsh, coastal paths, and  the sea. Norfolk is marvellously provided with very old churches, dating from the Anglo-Saxon period, when those pagans became Christian (it was said, in some cases, because of the free shirts that came with baptism...). Of course, Britain, under the Romans had been Christian, but their built remains are fewer, and often take the form of brick work embedded in later buildings. The Anglo-Saxons' stone churches, however, still stand in surprisingly large numbers. In East Anglia, and particularly Norfolk, the use of flints for buildings necessitated round towers:

This is the tower of St. Mary's, Burnham Deepdale, and it is around 1,000 years old. Inside, there is a large stone font, from the early Norman period, used to baptise Anglo-Saxon babies, who lie outside now, in the church yard, and who will continue to add to the bones of Norfolk for a while yet.

The church also boasts windows made of ancient glass. Above, fragments brought together in the 'moon window'; the eponymous moon staring wryly down at the passing of years and people.

Being on England's east coast, Norfolk is also well provided with relics from a nearer period. Since I first visited the area in 1984/5, the sea has taken much in the way of pillboxes and other concrete and brick defence works, but here is one of my favourite bits of 1940: 

An Allan Williams turret still in situ on sea defences near Cley-next-the-Sea, which straggles across the low escarpment in the distance. I have written about this turret elsewhere, as I am quite taken by its mushroom like being among the grasses.

And, all across the area the rain had done wonders for the ox-eye daisies, the dog roses and the poppies that festooned the roadsides and the hedges, while fields of barley ran beneath the sea wind in this corner of England: