2009-Aug-17 by Gregory Williams.

Today and tomorrow form my other major diversion from National Cycle Route 1 on the way back home to Canterbury. After a little portion of NCR1 out of Fakenham I soon met up with NCR13. Nearing Thetford Regional Cycle Route 30 also joins. Making good time I decided to follow this away from my planned route for a few miles in order to get it placed onto OpenCycleMap. I then retraced my steps to go into Thetford. The signing is slightly less clear for both NCR13 and RCR30, but there’s enough to work out the way; it’s mainly just that signs are poorly oriented to be visible on the approach to junctions (they’re fine for when you actually at the junction, but that’s too late for selecting your road position.). My plan was to follow RCR30 out of Thetford towards my accomodation this evening, but first I followed NCR13 some more through Thetford before retracing back to where RCR30 diverges from that. Unfortunately I forgot to put my camera batteries on charge last night, so I’ve had to note my Thetford detail via points-of-interest on my GPS. This means I haven’t managed to get road names here, seeing as many of them were longer than the 14 characters supported by my GPS, drawing a paper map would have been too much trouble this time. I’m sure that it won’t be too long until somebody else adds that level of detail.

Nearing Thetford the route uses a track which is also used by the Peddars Way long distance path. This skirts the edge of the Stanford military training area lined with notices every few metres warning the general public not to enter together with a long list of byelaws.

I’ve discovered something interesting (or at least I think it’s interesting) about the reference numbers for the postboxes in the Norwich (NR) area. All 14 of the postboxes I surveyed in this area repeated the digits from the outward portion of the code as the prefix for the latter portion of the code (e.g. NR16 1647). This is the only postal area that I’ve noticed this on, after having surveyed postboxes throughout the duration of this trip.

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2009-Aug-17 by Gregory Williams.

After starting out on the flat I got some hills back today and was glad for it. It adds more variety to the ride and cuts down the wind. It was a bright sunny day and pretty enjoyable.

On the way into King’s Lynn NCR1 meets NCR11 for a short while. It also meets RCR30 for a brief moment. I cycled very short stretches of these other routes to make sure that they’re marked on the map, but I’m pretty confident that we’ve already got the portion of NCR11 that I saw. I also met RCR30 late in the day, again briefly, so marked that as well.

The route today involved two large estates. Country estates that is. First of all there was Sandringham. The cycle route skirts the edge and you get to see some fancy gates in the process. Then, many miles further on, there’s the option of passing straight through the middle of Holkham Park by choosing the Wells Loop braid of NCR1. As it happens I decided to cycle both braids for completeness though. The cycle route in Holkham Park passes straight past both a large obelisk and Holkham House.

Today’s route also passed through Burham Thorpe, the birthplace of Nelson. Not surprisingly the local pub is named after him and the village sign proudly states the village’s heritage. Slightly earlier, on the way out of Burham Market, I had the fortune to spot a sign that gives the C-number of the road I was travelling on (C156). As those in OpenStreetMap know from experience first-hand evidence of C-road references is rare — this is only the third one I’ve seen, the other two being in Surrey.

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