The Royal Norfolk Show 2016

I am born and bred in Norfolk and I have never been to The Royal Norfolk Show can you believe?! It’s the UK’s largest two-day county show and aims to celebrate Norfolk’s heritage. Last year I went as a volunteer and thought it looked great but I was restricted to what I could do on site as I couldn’t gather freebies, make purchases or try the local delicacies in food and drink. This year I decided I wanted to go. The Norfolk Show ran for 2 days from Wednesday 29th June – Thursday 30th June and is around the same time every year. I decided I still wanted to volunteer so on the Wednesday I did that and scoped the place out ready to visit as a paying customer on the Thursday.

The gates open from 8am and I was keen to get there early. I don’t live too far away from the show but the traffic can get tedious! I contemplated walking but the Showground is a large area (I recently ran the race for life there) and from experience last year the miles walking around the show soon rack up! I chose to buy my tickets online at a discounted price. For the 2 of us plus parking came to £46, this would have been £60 if we paid on the day.

We arrived in good time, the traffic leading up to the show is a bit crazy and it did take us about 45 minutes to drive 3 miles but I was happy to arrive nice and early just after opening time. There is so much to see at the show from livestock to tractors, horse shows, flower shows and plenty of stalls offering freebies. My favourite place was the food hall! So many different delicious local food and drink items up for grabs! I brought my camera with me but forgot to take my memory card – blogger problems! Thankfully my boyfriend had his camera and took all of these lovely photos for me and let me borrow his camera when I saw something I liked.

As I mentioned before my favourite place was the food hall! There was cheeses, pork, chocolate, bread, brownies, drinks and everything and anything you can imagine. For lunch I decided to have something rather unhealthy from The Chocolate Fondue Company, a kebab stick with fresh strawberries and marshmallows soaked in melted milk chocolate and drizzled with white chocolate. The best £4 I have ever spent! Me and James also decided to get some Posh Pop drinks from Breckland Orchard, these were really refreshing and at 4 for £6 at the show, a great deal for such a great tasting treat.

We also had a look around all of the animal pens and saw pigs, sheep and cows. I loved looking at the pigs, pigs are great! We also watched a couple of the livestock shows that were going on throughout the day where they were judging sheep and cows. I felt like a proper Norfolk Bumpkin!

We wandered for around 7 miles in total, when my legs finally started to give up we had reached the flower show. I saw so many beautiful flowers and a large range of cactai (my favourite!). It was nice slowly wandering around and when we came to the end of the tent there was a cookery demonstration on. They were demonstrating how to make cakes and chocolates using a range of flowers in the ingredients such as lavender and hibiscus. Unfortunately we couldn’t stay to the end to have a taster as we had to leave, but they looked and smelled lovely!

Does your county have an annual show? Is this something you would go along to?

Halfords Ultimate Camping Guide*

Summer is right around the corner and what better way to celebrate by going on holiday. Holidays can be expensive but there is a cheaper way to get away for a few days and that’s by going camping. If you’ve never been camping before then have no fear, Halfords have brought out a really handy camping guide which you can download for free and contains plenty of information, advice on local attractions, cycle routes and hints and tips you’ll need for the perfect camping trip this summer. I’ll also be bringing you some great tips in this post too so read on for more information.

I received the Halfords Camping Guide in paper form and I cannot recommend it enough. I used it for my recent camping trip and it helped me out no end and ensured I was completely prepared for my trip.

The guide has pages on tourism hotspots from Scotland to Yorkshire and I decided to check out the Norfolk section as that’s the most local to me. You don’t have to go far to have a good time, the whole camping experience in itself is fantastic regardless of where you are in the country or even the world, sometimes it’s just great to get out of the house! Some of the tourism hotspots of Norfolk include Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach, Sandringham Estate and The Broads. Having been to all three of those places I can definitely recommend them for a great day out.  If you’re looking for a good cycle route in Norfolk then Marriot’s Way is a great place to go. The 15 mile stretch is completely traffic free and surrounded by trees and is a lovely atmosphere. Take a picnic with you and stop at one of the many benches on route.

The guide also contains great ways to entertain the little ones and beginners camping tips. Some of the tips I picked up in the guide that sat well with me from experience were:

Check the forecast – I have had many a soggy camping trip because I simply didn’t check the weather. Most campsites will allow you to pitch up without advance booking but check before you go. This way you can make a last minute decision. Checking the weather on a pre-booked trip allows you to pack accordingly and bring your waterproofs if there’s a chance of rain!

Practice pitching your tent – There is nothing worse than arriving at the campsite and not having a clue how to pitch your tent. I once went on a camping trip and it was so windy and we had no idea how the tent went up. Teamed with the strong gusts and trying to figure out what poles went where was an absolute nightmare. If only we had practiced at home beforehand it would have made the whole process a lot smoother.

Prep your food beforehand – It’s a good idea to prep as much food as you can before you go to save you time and effort. Chop any veggies you need and store in re-sealable bags. Pre-cook some pasta or rice. These can be added to campfire meals to bulk them out and feed hungry campers!

Bring plenty of warm clothing – Even if the temperature is set to be nice and hot during the day it can soon drop during the night. Bring lots of blankets and warm clothing for the evening. It is better to have too many layers to take off than not enough!

I hope you’ve enjoyed these top tips but please check out Halfords Camping Guide for further advice - it’s free after all! If you’re feeling inspired to go camping after reading this post, then check out all the information you need and view the extensive range of tents available at Halfords here.

*In collaboration with Halfords

GressenHall

A few weeks ago, Norfolk had some Heritage Open days meaning certain places which usually charged admission were open for free. There was loads of places I would have liked to have visited but I just didn’t have the time off. One of the places involved in the open days was Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse. Gressenhall is a 50 acre site with a museum, historic workhouse, farm and a great day out. The main buildings were built in 1777 and you can learn a lot about how things used to be here.

There are some lovely gardens here, they also have a little cottage set up to look how it would have been back in the day.

One of my favourite places here at Gressenhall is the set-up shop. I just love looking at the really old packaging, and find it really interesting. They also had a post office too!

I also love the 1950’s room, filled with retro and vintage items from the 50’s including recipe books, and even a photo album filled with old photos and memories.

Of course, I had to try on one of the hats!

We then looked around the upper part of the museum and saw some really cool and interesting things from different eras.

This doll really creeped me out! I can’t imagine having one of these when I was younger.

I was drawn to this picture as it looks a bit like my sister when she was younger. Spooky!

This story was a bit strange, I’m not sure what to think of it, but the alleyway this sign was down was pretty eerie.

We then took a walk outside through the orchard which interestingly used to be a burial ground.

After that we went for a snack. The café was located in what used to be the itch ward, which was a bit odd. I didn’t get itchy thankfully! I had a coconut flapjack which was really good.

After lunch we popped over to the farm which is across the road from the main museum. There’s a really nice walk here with lots of animals to see. You can also have a ride on horse and carriage and a tractor, but we opted to walk.

Overall, I think Gressenhall is a great day out for people of all ages and really interesting. You can check out their website here. I’d love to hear your recommendations for other places to go on days out!