Beside the seaside

We've had a lovely couple of days' weather, and some well-placed Bank Holidays, so I've cycled a lot more than I usually do; on Monday I did the last piece (Lowestoft to Ipswich, stopping for lunch in Southwold) to assemble a tour of East Anglia. Southwold to Ipswich I did 64km in almost exactly four hours, pushing myself slightly to make the 1902 train rather than having to wait for the 2000 one.

Again, pleasant country lanes - more hedges than on the Lynn-to-Cambridge route, and there was a moment half an hour in when I finally realised that the difference in the landscape was that there were patches of woodland around Lowestoft in a way that there hadn't been around Downham Market.

Southwold is a strange place, feeling rich and somehow self-consciously kooky; the church is a splendid piece of wealthy Regency work: knapped flint, painted roof-beams, clerestory, and benefaction panels specifying that the bequest should be invested in the 4% Consols.

I continue to like the cast-iron village signs that were put up mostly around the time of the Queen's Silver Jubilee: