“Star shaped” hand raised pies from the in-store bakery of Wm. Morrison, were the pies of choice for the final munching of flaming June. As it was so hot, we headed to
Overstrand for a walk near the coast. Parking by the cricket ground we walked west along the main road to the church of
St. Martin, but not visiting it, before we headed up Newman’s Hill. Descending by Suffield Park to join the Paston Way, we passed Cromer lighthouse
that featured prominently in the classic 1960’s film “
The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter”. We headed towards and walked through
Cromer, to the zigzag slope on the west of the town, that goes down to the prom. Now walking east, we made our way to the pier to consume our sandwiches above the sea. The Walk Master then led us up a steep ascent of the cliffs to the
Red Lion with it's good selection of beers,
of which we sampled “Stripey Jack” from
Bees brewery, Woodforde’s “Sundew” & Wolf’s "
Straw Dog". We made our way
back to Overstrand on the firm sand, thanks to the low tide. Heading back to the town centre via The Londs, we passed the impressive
clock tower at The Pleasaunce - designed by Edwin Lutyens and dating from 1897-9. We took our tea and pies to Overstrand cricket ground to utilise the seating. Only Six munchers this week, no King Canape, so straight into the pies: cutting revealed a bright pink interior with no jelly and no aroma. Munching proved the crust to be both crisp and tasty, the filling less so, tasting faintly of unsmoked ham. Mustard didn't really enhance the flavour. The pies were judged to have an acceptable score of 7.25 – marginally higher than when we last sampled these on the
31st May, last year. The standard deviation was also slightly lower at 0.68920 and with one less muncher! While consuming the post pie Shortbreads, José noticed the cricket club's fixture list and that Overstrand were playing the
Bystanders Cricket club on 12
th June and
14th August. Wm Morrison’s star shaped pies get a normalised score of 7.5 on this outing.
After a hiatus of two weeks, quality pies for the munchers return. Van Pelt of King’s Lynn “Quality Pork Butchers Established 1935” once holders of a Royal warrant, were this weeks suppliers. To ensure that our palates were in prime pie tasting condition for this new pie for the munchers, the Walk Master had devised a route to take in a beer festival. We parked at Reedham railway station and caught the train to Berney Arms. From here we walked to the river and followed the Wherryman's Way towards Reedham.
We took lunch at about three miles on the raised path where Don donned a plastic bag for a hat, why - no one knows, but he had a vague likeness of Father Christmas. Bellies filled, we resumed our trek to Reedham via the Wherryman's Way. Just before Reedham, we headed to the Humpty Dumpy brewery to purchase fine ales from the brewery shop. Heading back to the river and the Lord Nelson, only to find that the beer festival was being held in the village hall!
Never mind, the Lord Nelson had an excellent range of beers for us to consume. However, their dispensing skills didn't match the excellent beer range. Eventually we had our much-anticipated beverages that we consumed by the river. The ladies were treated to a viewing of a group of men posing in their mankinis, standing on the top of their boat, as they passed by. We wandered off back to the cars, some following the Walk Master's route, utilising footpaths, while the breakaway group took a shorter route along the road. Back at the railway station, the first offering was carrot sticks and Waitrose supreme houmous. Then the irregular shaped pies with their domed tops and filling. Cutting was an effort as the crust was quite hard. Not a great deal of aroma but a very good looking filling with jelly. I thought this was a very good pie, though it was let down by having a quite salt aftertaste. The pie munchers judged this pie at 7.57692 out of ten - a good score as two returned a score of just 5! So a high standard deviation of 1.38212 was recorded. Ginger & Lemon Cookies supplemented the traditional shortbreads. After grazing, the pie munchers just stood around mardling for ages. Eventually we got into cars and raced back to the Pie Master's where cars and passengers were swapped about. So Van Pelt ends up with a normalised score of 7.5.
