Summer Holiday, 1958

A Memory of Cromer.

My family and I stayed in the Elmhurst Hotel, Cromer for two weeks during August 1958. My brother and I made several coach excursions from Cromer - to Yarmouth, Lowestoft, Sandringham, King's Lynn and Ely. I went alone to Sheringham by train - the trains were still running then! - and found a most interesting book - which I still have - in a secondhand bookshop. I remember the beach there was most peculiar - divided by an almost straight line into areas of shingle and sand. We all went on a boat trip on the Norfolk Broads, and by train to Norwich for the day. On Cromer pier there was the Guinness clock telling Guinness time - on the hour the clock would open up, played a tune and all sorts of funny figures appeared and moved. It was a great attraction. Thank goodness, I took a photo of it, because I don't think the clock exists now. In later years my parents took my younger sister to Cromer every summer and they stayed not at the Elmhurst Hotel but at Grange Court. I remember that at the Elmhurst there was a microphone system and one day my brother and I amused ourselves with it when our parents were out - but when they returned they told told us they could hear us all the way down the road!