"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.

Much more than a naughty acronym*

Norwich is nice, even in appalling weather that we have great hopes is moving away overnight. Sited on what is probably East Anglia's only hill, it has heaps of churches, a lovely cathedral (yet to be explored, as there was a service about to begin. On a Sunday! Tch), an impossibly old and sturdy-looking four-square castle full of gory stuff like a gibbet, death-masks and iron yokes, lots of appealing little winding lanes to wander along, good shops, cafes and restaurants, and a pretty midtown market of  permanent stalls all brightly painted in stripes like beach huts.

It will be open tomorrow, and fingers crossed there'll be sunshine so we can gawp and snap away to our hearts' content: it's a very medieval place, and the buildings are a wonderful mix of stone and flint and half-timber, very pretty and photogenic.

Tonight we ate at Suckling House, a 16th-century mercer's house with pointed windows and vaulted ceilings, and then went upstairs to watch a movie in the cinema in the same building. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen was a bit dislocating in that setting, but also familiar, as the Yemen is next door to the United Arab Emirates, where I was just a couple of weeks ago, although it seems much, much longer than that. It was an entertaining movie, and quite funny.

Perhaps on a guided walk tomorrow, we may learn the story behind this street sign. I'm guessing it won't be a comedy.**

* (k)Nickers Off Ready When I Come Home
** Apparently it was a (presumably VERY old) pub sign showing two washer women trying to scrub a poor little black boy white. Urgh.

Hung with snow, along the bough

Well, Housman probably would have written that, had he seen this courtyard outside the Temple Church (the Inns of Court, by the way, are naturally very attached to rules, hence the underlining) - what looks just like a sprinkle of snow is purely petals. But the showers and rain have been interspersed with enough bright spells for us to enjoy a trip along the river on a ferry, gawping at old faithfuls like Tower Bridge and the Belfast, and at the new entrants, like the Gherkin and the Shard, which is very nearly finished.

Then it was lovely to walk through the gardens along the Embankment - so many green bits in the middle of all the roads and buildings in London - admiring the spring flowers and stopping every 20 metres or so to study yet another statue or memorial. London always reminds me of my aunt's front room, where every flat surface is cluttered with little ornaments, plates and knick-knacks. Some of the statues are obvious, like Robert Raikes of Sunday School fame, and Samuel Plimsoll of the line (possibly also the sandshoe), and Arthur Sullivan out the back (front?) of the Savoy Hotel. But there was a mysterious marble statue presented to Britain in 1920 in gratitude by the people of Belgium. That had me, historically deficient as I am, foxed until we went to the theatre that night.

War Horse the play, predating the movie by a year or so, was brilliantly done and quite moving, deserving its standing ovation at the end. It also mentioned that Britain entered the Great War in response to the German invasion of Belgium, which if I ever knew, I'd forgotten. There's going to be quite a lot about war in the blog posts from this trip. Some of it's going to be pretty heavy. You have been warned...

Hi ho (possibly ho hum) for spring

This photo on the front page of the Evening Standard strikes me as so typically English: a hosepipe ban recently declared after a long stretch of below-average rainfall is immediately followed by torrential rain that's delivered a month's worth of precipitation in just two days. And the people sigh and snap up their umbrellas and soldier on, martyrs as ever to the weather.

If they hadn't had that early sunny spell in March, no-one would have been surprised: spring is about changeable weather, after all. At least there have still been clear spells, when London's colours are bright - the flower-filled public gardens, the red buses, the gold on the domes and crosses, the pictures on the pub signs.

Yesterday the Queen opened the Cutty Sark to the public again, after a long restoration that was delayed by a big fire in 2007. The fastest clipper on the route to Sydney in 1885, it looks splendid now, its hull encased in shiny brass - and that part is conveniently glassed-in. It's a fine place to sit with a cup of the tea it was originally designed to bring to London from China, for the comfort and succour of the people, especially in weather like this.

Now that April's there

Ah, England in the spring! Wet and cold and windy, and irredeemably miserable - until the sun comes out and it's warm and bright and suddenly you notice flowers everywhere (only slightly battered-looking): forget-me-nots and tulips, primroses and honesty, forsythia and camellias.

Here in Farnham the brick looks warm, the Castle with its sets of seven steps built for the blind bishop looks imposing on its hill beside the town, and the pubs are cosy and welcoming. And so are the people.

Not so the cats in my aunt's house, who treat my friendly advances with disdain and suspicion, and look at me with narrow eyes if I sit in the wrong chair. It's a long way to come, to be sneered at through whiskers.

Au revoir

Here I am, in a restaurant opposite the Hotel de Ville, one block from Notre Dame: no French person would even consider eating in such a touristy spot. But how far wrong can you go, with French onion soup? Not wrong at all, it turns out - melty, salty, stringy just as it should be. And crusty bread to dip.

Hot, too, which is welcome on a spitty, chilly spring day which makes the original plan of mooching about Paris seem much less attractive. After a night of fitful sleep, anxious about validating my pass and missing connections, all has gone well so far.

Next step, Eurostar to London through the channel tunnel, and then no more language challenges - though, judging by the blank looks several of my comments at dinner last night scored from the Americans, my Kiwi accent could be making me the one people are struggling to understand. Eh, bro.

Give a dog a

Beaune: yet another absurdly pretty French town... except this one is the last, sniff. We got into Chalon sur Saone early this morning and were bussed to Beaune to look at the very lovely and wholly unusual Hotel de Dieu, a hospital for the poor set up in 1443 by a businessman looking to score enough credits to guarantee an entry into Heaven. It's such a striking building, with its glazed roof tiles, turrets, gables and gargoyles, and there's some really interesting stuff inside, too - though the medical instruments are a bit horrifying, especially the eye-watering one designed to be sat on.

It was market day, so that was colourful, despite the showers, and then my Kiwi colleagues left to start their long, long journey home while I just wandered the narrow cobbled lanes gawping at the uniformly old and un-uniformly designed buildings. Many of the other River Royale passengers disappeared into the town's cellars for wine tastings, but it was enough for me to be driven afterwards along the Route des Grands Crus where even I recognised the names of the villages, like Meursault and Montrachet.

Back in Chalon there was a little war museum to visit with some sobering photos of the town during the occupation, and of the battlefields, as well as an interesting Resistance section with an instruction manual open at the page showing how to blow up a railway line. And then it was time to go and pack, ready for my early departure tomorrow morning, out in the wide world on my own, finding my way to Paris and then London by train. Along lines that haven't been booby-trapped, hopefully.