I Love Norwich

The Lanes

26/05/16

I’m not sure when the Norwich Lanes became An Official Thing, but by Christ is it easier to refer to them as ‘The Lanes’  rather than ‘that nice bit of Norwich with loads of old buildings and independent shops and that.’ Whenever I bore the tits off visitors to the fine city, I always implore them to make sure they spend time there ‘because that’s the real Norwich, you know, it doesn’t have the big chains, but it does have Britain’s oldest head shop, and really nice pubs, and benches everywhere. Ooh, and Thorns.’

I am the world’s most inept DIYer, and yet I have a soft spot for Thorns DIY that’s a mile wide. For some reason, that rabbit warren of cleaning products, paint, garden tools and string has an utterly hypnotic fascination for me. Something about it makes me feel like I’ve taken a brief detour into the 1950’s.

Right, yeah, sorry, The Lanes. I just sodding love them. To me, they are the real bit of Norwich, the bit that couldn’t exist anywhere else, and not just exist, but feel genuinely thriving. An odd, mismatched ragbag collective of independent, unusual and sometimes downright weird (you know who you are) places to wander about. Where else would you find a place called St Gregory’s Back Alley (I still snigger over that one), that leads to a redundant church full of vintage clothing, antiques, oh yeah, and one of the best examples of 14th Century wall paintings in East Anglia? That kind of oddness is around pretty much every corner, and you never quite know what you’re going to stumble upon next, but it will be fun finding it. Perhaps because The Lanes aren’t full of identikit clone chain stores, but businesses that are owned by people who actually give a fap about what they’re doing, there’s something quite artlessly eccentric about the whole area that feels unforced. A bit like a lovely mad old woman with wonky lipstick sitting in a pub on her own, it shouldn’t work, but it does.