The end of anything, contains an element of coming down from a relaxed enjoyable state of being away. Engaging with somewhere that is new, or at least not the colours and aromas of your usual surroundings. Early in the morning before dawn has even begun waking up the sky, this is all still only a theoretical proposition. This leaving point has not yet arrived, and you are lying in bed imagining reaching that point, and its a slightly daunting prospect.
And the journey home? Well, that is being slowly factored in as this unpleasant necessity. The pulling yourself away from a place and situation you have grown emotional ties with, a fondness occasionally bordering on an unrequited love for. All of this adds to the longing for the future direction of life to be of a different cast, to what you are going back to. Making the coming down not always an enjoyable process, more a tearing yourself away from this fresh romanticised obsession.
In our case, we are literally coming down the country, in the general direction of Norfolk. The route we sketched out very roughly last night. A leisurely and well paced speed of travel. Breaking up the five hours of car travel into three to four bite sized chunks. With regular stop overs to stretch legs and rejuvenate the tired forever travelling mindset. Oh, and also, to eat!
Our first planned stop was Beverley. a town I've not been back to since my teenage years. And it turns out to be far far better than my memory of it. We had breakfast in Carluccio's for goodness sake!. I had what was the finest Eggs Florentine of the entire holiday. Wandering around the town, its very well served. We even found our first half decent yarn shop. Yorkshire having turned itself into a bit of a yarn desert. Beverley, like many places has become Doggy obsessed. With not one but two Dog themed businesses, each one a great play on words, one called Oh My Dog, the other Everything But The Dog.
And so it was soon onwards to our next stop over in Sleaford. For years of travelling north we have passed the sign for The National Centre for Arts & Crafts and said we should take a look. This time, we took a look. The building is a huge four story building, of which they only use two floors, and only one as a full exhibition space. Whoever is the Artistic Director is not doing a good job. Only one exhibition room of rugs, vaguely connected to Winifred Nicholson, which was OK ish.
Two smaller exhibitions, one stuffed in a corner of the Shop, another spread down the window sills of a stairwell. The Stairwell exhibition of three dimensional design work was actually quite good, but easily overlooked. Imagine these as maquettes for really huge room filling constructions. The centre appears to be focused primarily on increasing local engagement with lots of making and dance workshops for kids and adults. Rather than National, it all had a bit of a provincial art centre vibe, and lacked large craft statement ambition. Underwhelmed I was. A big big disappointment, with one truly horrendous car park!
Our final stop was in the Hardwick Retail Park in Kings Lynn. Not for any other reason than we both needed to get out of the car. Hubby had been driving by then for four hours, with another hour ahead. So we idly wandered into The Range, which had already gone full on floors and floors of Christmas. We ended up buying this years Christmas Crackers. Whatever colour theme we decide on for our Christmas is invariably set by the crackers. So this year its Burgundy & Emerald flocking with gold foil. The flocking was a bit of a surprise, but we are prepared to go with tacky vulgarity. Oh, the Holiday is now well and truly over.
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