Blickling Hall

Norfolk in England is the part that sticks out (bulges) on the east side just above London. It’s the part of the country that is nearest to Holland and consequently is very flat and has the occasional windmill. There are also several RAF airbases and some American ones…..plus a couple of prisons so I didn’t stop for any hitch-hikers!

I left the house at about 1.30pm (as my directions said that it was about a 3 hour drive and it’s a standing concert) and just after I’d gone through the Dartford Tunnel, I realised that I’d left my driving directions at home! I resorted to that old fashioned thing called a map and hoped for the best as my map is over 10 years old! I didn’t expect that they had moved Blickling Hall but I wasn’t sure how accurate all the roads were!

Thankfully I managed to find my way to Blickling Hall okay but I was surprised that there were only signs for the venue about 5 miles away. When I got there I parked and walked across a field to where people were queuing in roped aisles. I had tickets for this concert for two friends and tickets for the Warwick Castle concert tomorrow for two others so thankfully I found those people okay (or rather they found me!).

The gates were supposed to open at 6.30pm but apparently they often open early there but some security guards came round to say that there had been an accident at the venue and an ambulance had been called so we would be let in late – he joked that Meat Loaf had a blister on his thumb!

They opened the gates at about 5.45pm and I was disgusted to see that loads of people just walked under the ropes to get in faster. Something my German friends always say is that it’s only the British that know how to queue and the fact that people of all sorts of ages were doing this was a sad photo of the me-society nowadays. Of course it would have helped if they had shelled out for a better method of dividing the aisles and had some security there but they probably didn’t expect people to act in such a manner.

When I did get inside thankfully it was quite easy to walk to near the front and I was amazed at this venue that people had their picnic tables and folding chairs right up to the stage – at Harewood House they made any picnickers go to the back. At about 7.20pm people started standing but there were still some people that stayed on their seats.

Before Hurricane Party played they explained that their rhythm guitarist had been run over by a Land Rover while he was sunbathing and that their manager would be playing instead from the wings. This guy has an absolute massive head of very blonde hair so how the driver of the Land Rover missed him is beyond me! There are also fields of sheep all around (two people I spoke to walked through one to get to the venue) so I would have thought that the driver would have been used to looking out for them and Johnny could easily have been mistaken for a sheep! Johnny came back from hospital during the set (he had a broken arm) and received a massive round of applause as he still sang on stage! (I felt sorry for the people who had paid $400 for a platinum package as because they were running late, they couldn't get their guaranteed spot in front of the stage so they had to stand on the side of the stage so had a dreadful view of mainly Meat Loaf and Paul Crook's backs! I'd have been annoyed too if I'd paid $400 and only seen that! At least Kasim seemed to feel sorry for them and went over to them once or twice.)

Meat Loaf played for about an hour and 50 minutes and it was another good concert – my favourites are Out Of The Frying Pan and Two Outta Three Ain’t Bad (plus Kasim starting us singing in You Took The Words!). I was about 4 rows back from Kasim’s side of the stage so I had a great view until 5 people pushed in about halfway through.

After the gig I went to the merchandise stall (as someone asked me to buy a T-shirt for them) and it was good to see that there were lots of the KSulton Bass postcards there!

I had some trouble finding my car (I’d parked in front of a tree but there were loads of trees!) but I managed to get out of the car park quite quickly. For some reason I found the drive home quite tough. I pulled into a service station and actually slept for nearly an hour. When I woke there were loads of wild rabbits playing by my car so I sat there and watched them for a while!

I got home at 3.30am and was fast asleep by 4.00am. I never did get to see Blickling Hall itself!

Mileage today: 283 miles

Tour total (in my car) – 6,252 miles