"Everybody's smiling!"

So said the chaplain ahead of us in the queue in the Refectory cafe at Norwich Cathedral this morning, when we congratulated each other on such a fine, sunny day and clear blue sky, after a month of dreary rain. The Cathedral is one of the city's many prides (another its Norman castle, above), its steeple second only in height to Salisbury, its cloisters the largest in the country, and the building overall light, airy, graceful and beautiful - though I have to admit to being most taken by the fact that the shiny copper font was recycled from a local chocolate factory.

It also currently has a pair of peregrine falcons nesting on the spire, dutifully incubating four eggs, to the infectious excitement of the two birders in charge of the powerful telescopes lined up on the nest. They also have a colour camera focused on the action, which they're watching on their iPad - how modern of them, yet also how sweetly old-fashioned of them to be so enthralled by the process.

Norwich is a lovely town to explore on a sunny day, riding the open-top bus around the main attractions, poking around the little lanes on foot, walking slowly over the lumpy cobbles, remembering to look upwards at the buildings, a colourful mix of stone, brick, flint, wood and stucco with their roofs every which way. We wandered along the river with its sleeping swans, through the Plantation Gardens with its Victorian follies, blackbirds and bright tulips, down Elm Hill where the tiny Bear Shop manages to fit in hundreds of teddies of all sorts, some of them works of art, all of them eminently cuddliable.There was high tea at the elegant Georgian Assembly Rooms, raspberry beer at the Belgian Monk, savoury waffles and cider at the Waffle House so conveniently directly across the road from our hotel at 38 St Giles that we could even get the wifi.

It's all been so good today that it's even more of a tragedy that we're going to be back to the rain tomorrow. Sigh.