Friday 5th April 2019

A long day ahead.

The alarm goes off at half five. An hour earlier if you're on BST, which I would be on a few hours later.

But anyway.

I get up and have a shower.

Then pack, get dressed and go down to check out. As always, being the first person to check out of the day, this requires waking the computer up, waking the printer up, then getting the two pieces of equipment to talk to each other to produce my bill. It should not be hard. But always is.

I walk outside, and see that the sky is most stunning mix of dark blue and pastel pink from the soon to be risen sun. I stop to take a snap as a dustcart emerges from a side road.

Still a fine morning.

I load the car and drive out of the town onto the motorway west, before turning up the 30 north towards Billund. It is a glorious morning, full of the promise of a warm spring day, the sky a coat of many pastel pinks and reds. I makes the heart sing.

And I was on my way home.

And if I timed it right, I could drop the car off, check in and have half an hour to answer any mails.

I drop the car off, and the keys on the letter box, but in a change, the airport is already full as people are lining up to check in bags, but the line at security is short. I could just drop my bags off, I would be OK. But, there is no one manning the desk, seems she is splitting her time between the BA desk and a Polish budget airline. We just have to wait.

By the time she comes over and I check in my case, the queue at security is huge.

So I go to the cafe for breakfast of a nutella roll and a small coffee. I was hoping the line would be shorter, but no.

I join the end, but it moves quick. I think I could have joined the fast track line, but what's the point as there would be nowhere to sit the other side?

I wait and get through, and have just half an hour before departure. Enough time to take a call from work, sort some stuff out, and I do this walking to the gate.

My friend is not on duty today, so I slip into my usual seat on what was a pretty full flight for a change. At least with spring having arrived in Denmark, the promise was for a pleasant flight.

I hoped so.

And as the pilot summarised the weather in London, he said wind gentle from the east, which meant an approach from the west, and a grand tour of LOdon as we swoop to land. I have my camera with me.

Of course.

We drop from cruising height as we cross from the Belgian coast over to Essex. Soon, the familiar sights of the north Kent coast hove into view and are snapped before the plane turns to the west to skirt round the southern suburbs of that London.

Dropping down further, I just see the radio mast at Crystal Palace as the pane turns to the north briefly before turning again this time to the east as we pass over Battersea.

London unfolds below us like a conveyor belt, I am snapping all the time. I have shot these before, but London is changing all the time.

We skip the roofs of Canary Wharf and down, down we drop until the plane bounces down.

I am home.

But this is just another leg in today's long journeys.

We have to wait for planes in front of us to have their slots clear, then we wait too to be reversed into slot 12.

A bus is waiting to take us to the terminal, and once we are let off it is a sprint to get to immigration then wait to use one of the scanners and into the baggage reclaim to find my case.

All the time the clock is ticking in my head.

I walk into the arrivals hall, Jools is in Costa waiting for me. She has the car, and if she remembered, all my camera gear is in the boot.

We get onto the DLR to Stratford to Westfield Shopping centre where the car is parked.

Can all these bloody shoppers get out of the way?

We get to tehc ar, set the sat nav and off we go, making our way out of the shopper's paradise to the North Circular, then up the M11 north into Essex.

I know this road so well, that I mark off the landmarks as we cruise at seventy into Suffolk after taking the A11.

Jools wanted to be dropped off in Bury St. Edmunds, a town I have never visited, so we make our way to the long term car park and I see two huge and interesting churches (one is a cathedral) as well as long roads of timber framed houses. All looks wonderful.

I make my way back out of the twon and up to Thetford, stopping off at a garage to top up the tank and get a sandwich and pasty for lunch.

I was here for a tour of the Stanford Battle Area, STANTA, where there are four ancient churches which are open for visits just a few times a year. Much of my spare time these last two weeks have been spent in arranging places on the tour. I say places, as I also got my frined Sarah a place. We should meet up before the tour begins.

A arrive at half one, with dozens of people already had turned up. A kind security card checked my name off, and another directed me to park the car.

I waited for Sarah to arrive, I was worried she might not make it, but soon I see her smiling face in her car as she is granted access.

There are over 100 people on the tour, to be moved around on two coaches. We have a security and H&S brief, then told to board our coaches Most rush to the front coach, we go to the second and bag a seat near the front.

STANTA was requisitioned by the Ministry for War in 1943 for preparations in the run up to D Day, but it seems they forgot to ever give it back.

The people who lost their homes and farms went to live elsewhere, as the chances of ever returning were dashed.

Since the war, the site changed and existing villages were used to simulate urban warfare in, at first German villages from the northern plains,then Northern Ireland, then Croatia and finally Afghanistan. So, from the Norfolk countryside, places from either the Former Yugoslavia or the mountains of Afgahanistan rise from the heathland.

But inbetween is how Norfolk was before the war; leafy lanes, undisturbed wildlife and sheep (with lambs) and long leafy lanes that meander going nowhere in particular. And in the middle of the area, near Stanford, there are no sounds of the modern world, not a car on a road.

Apart from the fabulously remote and tumbledown churches, there is nature and recently delivered lambs and their proud mothers wandering around oblivious to the dangers of the large buses trundling by.

We go to Tottington first, a large square towered East Anglian church. Just roofed with shaped iron tiles, instead of the red earthen ones stored inside.

Soon there are a hundred or more people wandering around, snapping the sights and features of the church.

Getting the people back on the coach is like herding cats. It takes ages, and we are on our way at just gone four. There are three more churches to visit.

Stanford itself is a fine round-towered church, but the building itself is in a poor state, after the Victorian plaster work on the chancel arch is in danger of falling down, so a substantial scaffolding frame is keeping the rest of it in place.

The next church is Langford. A simple church on the edge of a field, reached down a path that is barely a track as so few people now come here. The sheep nearby are curious, so fearless are they of people. As we leave we see a new born lamb, still coated brown by the birth and standing on jelly-like legs as its mother licks it clean.

The final church is West Tofts, once a fine medieval church in its own right, but in the middle of the 19th century, Augustus Welby Pugin came along. He built a huge new chancel, and two huge chapels to house tombs, so now looks like two separate churches locked in a passionate embrace.

Here, there was a service. Quite high too. But it gives the rest of us time to wander round and get more pictures.

At the end, I rush round the chancel getting shots. I look at my watch, it is ten past six. I should have been picking up Jools in 5 minutes.

I see on my phone I had 9 missed calls from her, so I call her back, and she is now waiting at Thetford after catching a train.

Once the bus arrives back at the main gate, I get my car out and drive as quick as I can to collect Jools.

In the end I am there at twenty to seven, she gets in the car and we begin the final leg of the day, back home.

We were going to stay the night in Norfoolk, but wth Easter coming up, I thought the roads would be busy Saturday morning, so we would travel back home.

We had a clear run to the A11 then to the motorway and down to London. No hold ups at all, and good going as the fine evening dragged on to nearly eight.

By the time we were back into Kent, it was night, but with less than an hour to go, no need to hurry,

We arrive home some 16 hours after we both got up.

Shattered, but a great day, and one which I have recorded on hundreds of pictures.