Tuesday 4th April 2023

Woke around 0830...drew the curtains to let the sunshine in...the North Sea still looked a dirty brown, though! Went downstairs for breakfast at 0930. Enjoyed a full English, with locally sourced bacon, and pork sausage. Packed up and checked out. Discovered the hotel garage was also used as a pigeon roost, and they'd evidently had much fun excreting all over our car during the night! Put our stuff in the boot, then walked southward along the strand to the Martello Tower, and views toward Orford Ness. Still pretty breezy out, but not as bad as yesterday. 

Drove to Orford, stopping off on the way at Snape Maltings, a former industrial site with amazing buildings, now converted into shops, cafes, workshops and studios, and, the centre-piece, the Concert Hall, now the home of the annual Aldeburgh Music Festival. The concert hall is literally a great barn of a place, with a huge stage big enough to fit a full orchestra on...the seats didn't look terribly comfortable, though! Had a browse in the Ancient Music shoppe, full of clavichords and harpsichords, lutes, wooden recorders, and ancient looking bulbous guitars. 

The bloke behind the counter was a bit perturbed to learn we were ukulele players, but instead of ushering us from the premises, he played a couple of the keyboards for us, and told us a bit about them...the clavichord had been owned by Peter Maxwell Davies, and they had had to pick it up from his home in Orkney after he'd passed, and get it to a restorer, in Dorset! Drove on to Orford, and parked up by the quay. Had lunch in a little wooden shack fronting the River Ore. Drove on to Lavenham, stopping off at a Tesco garage on the outskirts of Ipswich to take advantage of the car wash, which cleaned most of the pigeon poo off the windscreen, so Aki could see out of the window. Parked up in Lavenham Market Square and took a turn round the village, admiring the stunning timber framed buildings, then headed for home. Got back to Holloway around 1930. Walked round to Big Jo's for dinner, then back home to flake out on the sofa in front of the telly.