Snape - a great place to shop

April 27, 2013

STRAIGHT off to Snape Maltings, where I expected to spend a couple of hours looking at art exhibitions but ended up whiling away half the day.

“Another retail opportunity” was how David summed it up.

It was bitterly cold outside, which helped persuade us to stay under cover. But how lucky a chance that was …

There was a huge and very high-class home and garden shop, and there were little shops attached to each art and craft exhibition, so a great deal of present-buying was done.

Plus there was a food shop with cake and wonderful cheeses, most of which disappeared immediately after we returned to the Hymer for coffee.

Outside, there were Hepworth and Moore sculptures to admire.

Sadly, given my interest in buildings, we didn’t see inside the auditorium, because of signs saying ‘Ticket holders only’. Maybe we should have pushed our luck and just wandered in.

“I’m all shopped out,” I groaned as we put down our bulging carrier bags on a seat in the Hymer.

“Then this is a truly jaw-dropping moment,” replied my long-suffering other half.

Fresh air was the only thing that would do. So we droved to Aldeburgh – one of us making a mental note to save the shops there for another day – and parked up by the absolutely lovely Maggi Hambling shell sculpture on the beach.

Impossible to resist climbing up to sit on it and survey the sea in front of me.

Thorpeness beckoned on the horizon, with the House in the Clouds and the Sizewell power station poking up above the trees, so we decided to walk there with Glen. Bracing is probably the word for it.

But by way of compensation there was a great white egret on the marsh just across the road.

How nice it is, too, in East Anglia to see fields full of free-range pigs, having fun as pigs are meant to. Piglets racing each other for the sheer joy of it. Why on earth does anything think it’s right to keep pigs in sheds?

We’d pre-booked a Caravan Club site at Lowestoft because I fancied a nice hot shower and a few home comforts. And we got there in time to bag a perfect pitch overlooking the beach.

We couldn’t help recalling our camp site at Tarifa, on our Spanish expedition this time last year.

Time for a gin and tonic … or two.

PS We thought we’d ask readers of this blog for their suggestions for the best birdwatching and seawatching sites, preferably with dog-walking close by.