06-08 Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach

We had a wonderful breakfast of pancakes and bacon this morning created for us by our hosts at the Bed and Breakfast, Beaumont House, here in Great Yarmouth. Smashingly good, says Karen.

Afterwards we caught up on email and blogging, packed up, paid our bill, and drove into town for some touristy things.

We decided to go back and visit the Yesterday's World Exhibition since Karen had read about it back in Seattle and it had "Queen" stuff in it and after all it WAS the Queen's Jubilee Celebration Week. It's before noon and we get in 2 FOR 1! That's another $7 saved for ice cream!



This history museum is on two floors and we head upstairs first and who do we run into but Queen Victoria. Her portrait on the wall is a video screen and her mouth is moving as she explains about her life and her reign. That's her on the wall on the right. Spooky.



Strangely they have 3 or 4 rooms you can look in on at various movie figures. Dr Jeckel and Mr Hyde were in one room and a scene from The Time Machine was in another. We left that area shaking our heads and moved on.



Downstairs they had a train station setup, different town buildings housing medicine, toys, and hardware. They had a series of rooms with video screens on them where a man would tell you about his job and they had recorded it IN the room you were in. There was a carpenter, a wheelright, and a pharmacist.



They had an 1898 Carousel that we got to ride for free so we did.



The amusement park area had opened by now at Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach so we got in the car and headed to the other end of the Strand.

We bought a bag of 30 tokens for $25 and headed off down the midway like children looking for someplace to spend them.



We had to ride the Roller Coaster first so we gingerly counted out 6 tokens for the greedy ride operator.

These are really old time looking cars on this 80 year old coaster that was originally installed for the Paris Exhibition of 1931. Great Yarmouth bought it from them and had the original builder rebuild here in 1932.



Most roller coasters have what is called an upstop wheel to keep it on the track. This coaster sits in a trough and the wheels of the coaster cars just roll on top of the track.



It also has a brakeman who rides in the middle of the train and keeps the speed of the train under control. That's the breakman who looks like he's standing up on the ride.



Here is his office.



We rode in the front the next time we got on. There's a bit more action with bunny hops at the end of the ride.



We took a ride on the hokey Haunted Hotel.



They had a 4D movie with comfortably motion seats out of the wind and rain but the movie was terrible.



We took one last ride on the coaster in the back seat and had two shiny tokens left for souvenirs. It was raining every time we rode so we were constantly wiping our lens as we took video and pictures.

We left the park as the rain started coming down harder looking for a place to have lunch in town. Subway today.

We filled up with gas before leaving town on our 160 mile drive for the day to Coventry and our next bed for the evening.

06-07 Long Drive Left Side of Road

Today we left the London area and headed for the east coast of England to a town called Great Yarmouth. It is famous to us because it has one of only two side-friction roller coaster left running in the world.

But first I had to get there which is not an easy task when you're from the states and they require that you drive on the left hand side of the road. It was 165 miles to our next town and I got to drive on freeways at 70MPH and one lane country roads where I had to squeeeeeeze over to allow another car to pass.

They had this amazing set of cameras set up on the Motorways that would keep all of the drivers driving the speed limit. We never saw a police car in the 4 hours we were on the road today.



Anyway, driving is sometimes just playing follow the leader. Its the getting on and off the motorway on the left side that gets a little dicey. There certainly isn't any boredom in the driving. Now, if I can only relax my grip on the steering wheel I might actually enjoy the drive.





We arrived safely and with minimal wrong turns thanks to the GPS.

We checked into our Bed and Breakfast (that's ours, #52) and dropped off our luggage before heading out into town.





We drove up and down the Strand before stopping at Merrivale Model Village to see the miniature town setup on a couple of acres.







Evidently they are big gamblers in this area since there were lots of establishments with coin games in them. Names like Flamingo, Showboat, Circus Circus, and the Majestic bring to mind Las Vegas casinos.



There was a place called Yesterday's World Exhibition that we wanted to see but they closed the entrance an hour before they actually closed. Maybe tomorrow.



We found the tower Karen had read about and went up for $2 pounds each



The weather was bad all afternoon so our views were just that good.





There is the roller coaster way down there wrapped in light blue steel.



We had a less than mediocre dinner at Sara's Tea Room of Fish and Chips and a Cheeseburger. It was one of those times when "recommended" didn't work for us.



Karen had read that Great Yarmouth was one of the many cities that had a Jubilee Celebration torch. It was supposed to be in the Anchor Park but we couldn't find any mention of the park on the city map. We found it from our tower! There were anchors cut into the grass.



So we drove over to the park and found the torch as well.



The town also had a series of canals about 3 blocks long between the strand and the ocean that rentable boats could travel on. It wasn't the season yet and things were a bit overgrown but we were told it is a very popular thing to do in the summer.