Footnote to the previous post

As I said in the previous post, we visited so many villages and towns today that my mind has got befuddled about which one was which. I think it was at Morsten that we visited the marshes. There was a windmill, I recall, and when we went to look around the other side of it we found the marshes, and a small stream, with a lock, running out to sea.
In Cley, we went around the back streets and alleyways between the houses. These were just delightful, particularly the alleys, where flowers grew up on both sides, and there were walls made of beach stones up high on either hand, and little arched doors into the back gardens of the people’s cottages.
The quay at Blakeney wasn’t too exciting, because the tide was out, and this meant that all the boats were sitting in the mud, This is normal each day, but not particularly attractive. Blakeney was crowded with lots of visitors, and was one of the places where we couldn’t get a park for love nor money. Well, we could have for money, but we weren’t going to pay £3 to park some distance away from the town for only a short period.
Going to Walsingham was a disappointment for me. When I was hitchhiking through England on my last visit to the country, I came across Walsingham almost by accident. I’d heard about it, I think, and it’s legend of the church being carried across from France (I think) by angels. I remember walking into the village and sensing a real atmosphere about the place. I wondered whether it was Little Walsingham that I’d visited last time, perhaps, because Walsingham itself struck me today as not very interesting and was certainly lacking in atmosphere.
We visited the Shrine, and the church that now surrounds it, and neither of us felt good about the place. The church is full of altars and chapels dedicated to different saints, and it’s very dark compared to the other English churches we’ve visited, as though light wasn’t somehow supposed to penetrate. I felt rather edgy in there, which was odd, and Celia came out saying it seemed idolatrous the way there was so much emphasis on saints. Hmm. Interesting that Walsingham has had a different effect on us this time!

I've just had a look at Walsingham on the Net and find that there are both Anglican and Catholic Shrines there. Seems like we went to the Anglican one, which being very high Anglican could easily have been mistaken for a Catholic church.