It was the best of days, it was the worst of days: as so often the King’s Lynn weather could not quite decide what it was up to.
The two rivers of my title are the Great Ouse and the Nar, both of which I walked along some of yesterday. Rumours the spring is upon us may not be so far wide of the mark – I saw a privately owned boat at the Jetty on the Great Ouse in King’s Lynn…

A brief diversion to check in on my Aunt’s place in her absence, revealed that even the most familiar of surroundings can spring surprises – this cannon ball in the entrance way to Hampton Court that I had not previously noted…

“Cormorant Platform” revealed no cormorants, but some other sea birds…

I continued along the riverbank further than usual, passing the new road bridge (before this was built the river could be crossed either by ferry or by taking a 12 mile detour via Wiggenhall St Germans, and paying a punitive toll to the Barons of Rising – the ruling class were even more open about fleecing us in those days!) finding more stuff to photograph…

I spotted a position from which I could take “townscape” photos of King’s Lynn looking back down the river and bagged a couple…


I walked on past Palm Paper (first photograph of next series) and then just before leaving the Great Ouse (and far further inland than I would expect) I finally spotted a pair of cormorants…

The small section of walking between leaving the Great Ouse and joining the Nar produced only a few photos…




The Nar Valley way runs almost interrupted (save for the bit where it intersects with the Nar Valley Park development) from King’s Lynn to Dereham, so once I had hit the Nar I could follow it to the South Gate, and which point I diverged to head home through the parkland…











I had a go as a kind of tribute to this blog’s latest follower, Charlotte Hoather, at creating a ‘playlist’ to fit my themes:
The Birds by Ottorino Respighi, The Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan Williams,The First Cuckoo in Spring by Frederick Delius,The Banks of Green Willow by George Butterworth, Symphony no 6, The Pastoral by Ludwig Van Beethoven. As well as these there were naturally a couple of famous ‘river’ pieces the sprang instantly to mind, Vltava (Bedrich Smetana) and the Blue Danube (Johann Strauss II) – The Great Ouse when the sun is shining is bluer than the Danube ever is (and I have seen both).