The Yare valley and the UEA - my favorite place in Norwich

I first arrived in Norwich in early 1973 when I came down for a "group visit" to the new university of East Anglia. I arrived late at night and slept over in the Suffolk Terrace guest room. Suffolk Terrace is one of the famous pyramid residence buildings and the guest room was right at the top. I woke early on that January morning and took a walk along the Yare valley and it was love at first sight.

Since then, although I've long been finished with UEA, the Yare valley remains the place I go when I need a bit of country, it's only about 2 miles from my house so it's easy to get to.

These photos were taken in early January 2002. The new hospital had just opened on the far side of the valley and there is pressure to build a road through the valley for the bus service to use, this is something of an issue locally and is a prime example of bad planning.

The University of East anglia

The first phase of the campus was all there was when I was a student. It's very much a product of the 1960's way of doing things, being built out of concrete and on a massive scale from a plan by Dennys Lasdon. The site is dominated by the "Teaching wall", the long building with the "ribbon" windows. In the fine tradition of the time of course, it was built in phases and never finished, the end of Biological sciences is still left as a raw end to this day.

In front of the teaching wall is Norfolk Terrace, one of the pyramid blocks of student residences. As an 18 year old hippy student, this architecture caught my imagination.

Later additions have been no less radical though, not least of all the Sainsbury centre for the visual arts by Norman Foster, opened in 1978

The Yare valley - click here