Loved & Lost

Tiny ponies at Kilverstone, the lost tribe of Cockley Cley, pedal cars in Cromer, colour-changing dancing fountains and wonderful waxworks (as in I wonder who that is supposed to be.) RACHEL BULLER and ROWAN MANTELL look back at some of Norfolk’s visitor attractions that have come and gone – and forward to the restoration and return of one favourite

 

- Rachel Buller And Rowan Mantell

HAVING SPENT a very happy childhood growing up in Norfolk, writes Rachel Buller, I like nothing more than looking back through rose tinted spectacles at a golden time in local tourism, when every day out was unquestionably fabulous, you didn’t endure daylight robbery in the gift shop and entry costs were pennies not pounds.

Things of course were a lot different 30 or 40 years ago and technology was yet to have an impact. Crazy golf courses – like Arnold Palmer’s on Yarmouth’s Golden Mile – were simple, not the myriad of water features, rope bridges and secret tunnels they are now. The circus still had tigers, elephants and bears – almost unbearable to imagine now – and, as you can see from the photograph of me here with my nanny and great aunt – toddlers were randomly handed monkeys dressed in mad knitwear to hold, without any apparent cause for alarm, on the streets of tourist towns.

These golden memories, I suspect, might have been further enhanced by both the mists of time and the onset of cynicism about tourist attractions today – as the one who now holds the purse strings. But nonetheless, there were some fantastic, quirky, one-of-a-kind (sometimes for a reason) tourist attractions which were quintessentially Norfolk, yet loved by those from all over.

GIANTS AND HELTER SKELTERS

Of course, Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach is still very much a part of Norfolk’s tourism scene, but there are two very special things which are no longer there.