Live And Direct From The East Coast!

Live from the east coast in general, and Lowestoft-ish in particular, a sample of our holiday snaps so far....

Crabbing At Thornham

Our second expedition in search of crabs was to Thornham, and in particular the tidal sluice gate, which was a recommended hotspot for crabs.

Unlike Wells, the "teabags" with the stinky bacon inside worked much better here, and we hauled in several of the little blighters.  Thanks to the height of the flagstones above the water plenty of them also managed to let go and drop back into the brine before we got them in the bucket.

See the picture below - I wonder what it is about crabbing that inspires Sam to perform a Rigsby Off Of Rising Damp impersonation?

Thornham wild, exposed but beautiful.  We walked halfway along the causeway pausing only to snap the sluice gate we'd occupied.

The dark dot in the distance of this picture is an old chap plodding up the creek to reach his boat (top right), maybe to haul in another few bags of freshly caught cockles?

European Champions!

 

King's Lynn won the European Championship of kuk sool won for the third year in a row!

This means that the school keeps the hugely expensive hand-embroidered championship flag for ever. Which will annoy the boss in America (Grandmaster Flash, or somesuch), as he'll have to shell out for a new one. The team assembled for the local press to take a most-victorious team photo....

....which was remarkable, as two minutes earlier the scene was very different!

Can you spot Sam?

Kuk Sool Won European Championship 2011

King's Lynn hosted the Euros for Sam's martial art again this year. The Lynn club had won the tournament in the previous two years, and a third straight victory would mean that the team kept the lavishly hand-embroidered, and extremely expensive championship flag forever. Which would seriously annoy the American boss of the franchise, aka Grandmaster Flash.

Above is Sam waiting to enter the arena for his turn to compete.

An unscheduled change to the age groups meant Sam was warming up in a group he hadn't expected to be in. Ho hum.

Here he is starting his "forms".

And finishing them.

Before turning away for the judges marks.

Sam didn't win a medal this time, but King's Lynn did win the title. And Grandmaster Flash has cut his Thai food budget by 50% to pay for a new flag.

Crabbing At Wells-Next-The-Sea

Our first expedition in the world of crabbing took us to Wells harbour. The photo above is one of my favourite shots of Sam, ever! We couldn't decide whether to go for the washing powder bag style, or the dish-net way, so tried both. It cost us a huge £5 for all the kit, plus a quid for some cheap bacon as bait, and we had a ton of fun.


And caught quite a lot of crabs, all by net.

A horde of ducks were doing the rounds, obviously well-used to a diet of broken seafood.

We enjoyed it so much that we went crabbing somewhere else two days later!

First Try At Sausage Making

Nikki gave Dad a great present at Christmas - a sausage machine! It's been a while, but we finally arranged to give it a trial run. Above you can see Sam and the machine, which is a very chunky,"proper" piece of engineering.

It took us a long time to even suss out what we were doing! As you can see, our end product was not regular in shape or size, but they were MADE BY US!

I came home with the four bangers above - Sam took the rest. They cooked up very nicely, but were rather bland. More seasoning and roughage next time.

But for a first attempt I think we did very well.

It was Nikki's birthday on the same weekend. We promised not to tell anybody how old she is....

Sandringham Craft Fair

Those magnificent men on their pogo machines, they go up-tiddly-up-up.....

...they go down-tiddly-own-down. Sam found a bargain at a car boot sale on the way to the Sandringham Craft Fair. Any idea what kind of car that is in the background?

The Craft Fair was a jolly affair as always, although we didn't rub shoulders with Her Maj.

We'd recommend a visit if you have never been. Where else could you see a man carving a canoe with a chainsaw?

It was also nice to pop into the stalls of some of our friends from Rate My Sausage, all of whom were doing a roaring trade. Above you can see David and Julie hard at work - by the end of the Fair they had completely sold out.

And you could hardly see the Jimmy's Farm crew, who were also seeing stock flying out!