Peterborough; Saturday, 21 August, 2021

I had a pretty full day planned, so I had to get up early and was one of the first people down for Breakfast. Fuelled for the day I headed out of the hotel and over to the bus station to pick up the Excel bus for my journey into the Fens.

The Excel bus is an express bus service that links towns across the Fens from Peterborough via Wisbech, Kings Lynn, Swaffham and Dereham to Norwich, only stopping in a handful of locations along the way. The service is run using very posh double decker’s with big comfy leather seats, Wi-Fi and USB charging ports and all of that for just over £10 for a day rover.

My first stop of the day was in Wisbech, a town that’s only just still in Cambridgeshire – sitting on the border with Norfolk and only a couple of miles south of Lincolnshire. Being an inland port on the River Nene the town was once an important location, and during it’s heyday in the Georgian period grew with large numbers of Georgian town houses, villas and even their own Crescent mimicking the Georgian splendour of Bath.

As the town expanded a number of speculative large town houses were built and in the early 18th century it was brought and furnished by a family of shipping merchants as a place to entertain prospective clients. After a few years the shipping merchants sold it and it was purchased by Jonathan Peckover – a successful shop owner and banker, who also happened to be a quaker and therefore didn’t see any point in spending money on remodelling the house. It remained in the family until 1948 where it was bequeathed to the National Trust, and therefore remains an almost perfect early 17th century Georgian town house. Today the house and the gardens are open to look around and I had a very interesting guided tour round the building, after having an opportunity to look around the gardens.

With the tour completed I headed back into the centre of town and grabbed some lunch before heading back over to the bus station and picking up the Excel bus for the next leg of my journey. This time all the way across to the middle of Norfolk and the town of Dereham.

Dereham was founded some time in the 7th century and has grown to be an important market town. With the coming of the railways it gained several connections, but as with many smaller towns in Britain these were lost in the Beeching cuts. However, the line was quickly preserved and today operates as the Mid-Norfolk railway, running the 17 or so miles down to the town of Wymondham.

I arrived at the station with enough time before my booked departure to have a quick look around the small museum and grab a quick cup of coffee before boarding and taking the train West. The journey is a pleasant ride through the Norfolk countryside before we reached Wymondham, where the train turned around and then headed back to Dereham.

Back in Dereham I headed slightly away from the town centre to pick up the bus, calculating that there was more chance of getting a front seat for the long journey back, and I was proved to be correct as the bus came to my stop almost empty, and then filled up quite a bit at the next stop, so I was able to enjoy the stunning views across the Fens on the near three hour journey back across some of the flattest land in the country.

Back in Peterborough, I went for a walk round the city centre, mostly to unstiffen my legs which, after three hours on a bus, were quite stiff. I also stopped off for a quick bite to eat before heading back to the hotel.