It's common knowledge that Norfolk offers all manner of diversity... except mountains. Don Black writes about discovering the fact late in life.

%image(14743166, type="article-full", alt="Polly and Alice dream of precious stones as they compare the "cream-shaded" colour of their grandparents' miniature dachshund with a Faberge model owned by the Queen.")

In all our combined 175 years my wife Barbara and I had never spent a holiday in Norfolk – until last month.

We have made countless day trips over the years to the Broads, Norwich, Great Yarmouth and Cromer and now live at Diss, a few hundred yards from our 'home' county of Suffolk.

From the late 1930s, however, my Stowmarket cycling friends and I regarded Norfolk as the 'big brother' county in East Anglia, too daunting to stay in beyond single nights at youth hostels.

In our limited view, Norfolk ended at the North Sea and Lincolnshire, together a huge expanse swept by head winds. Exploring Suffolk took time, then we usually ventured further in other directions.

Things changed a few months ago when our offspring decided they would take us and our wheelchair and zimmer to a Blickling cottage they hired for a week from the National Trust.

Admittedly they backed us to an extent that few of our age enjoy, but I must also admit that the Norfolk on our doorstep was a revelation.

We have warm memories of our outing to Cromer on Christmas Eve despite chilly weather and steps and slopes we had to negotiate to and from the pier. There's no place quite like it for the variety of interest in a small area.

We found Aylsham delightful on Christmas Day, the parish church so close to the market place that we needed only walking sticks to reach the morning service.

Blickling Hall shop and cafe were handily open on Boxing Day for the first time, but our dog was banned from going anywhere near. Contrastingly, on our last day of the holiday the cafe at Felbrigg Hall welcomed dogs. National Trust managements make their own decisions on such matters.

Felbrigg is one of those rare places where the parish church has no access by road or even a hard track. To avoid cars getting stuck in the mud, its December, January and February services are transferred to Metton.

We still overcame the challenge of access by wheelchair and were happy to find the church open with all its historic treasures.

In Norwich we had the extra advantage of being guided by a granddaughter who's a student at the University of East Anglia, to us a city in itself.

Our attraction there was the Royal Faberge and Radical Russia exhibition, which stays open in the Sainsbury Centre until February 11.

There my wife achieved a lifelong ambition - to see ae fabulous 'eggs' produced by famed jeweller Peter Carl Faberge for the Russian royal family.

Back in the days of the Soviet Union we had hoped to see at least one in the museums of Moscow or Leningrad (now St Petersburg again), but searched in vain. They had all been sold for then more precious foreign currency.

St Petersburg has regained some and at long last buried the bones of the last czar, his wife and children in the church of St Peter and St Paul. On our visit we saw a single fresh flower laid on the grave of Peter the Great.

Faberge's 'The basket of flowers egg' has been lent by the Queen for the Norwich exhibition, as has a miniature dachshund with agate body and diamond eyes.

Queen Victoria and her grandson Kaiser Wilhelm II shared a passion for dachshunds. Tsaritsa Alexandra's love of all dog breeds included even this canine symbol of the Germany she otherwise detested.

Although dogs and cameras are rightly forbidden at the Sainsbury Centre, we had fun later comparing our dachshund with that of the dog illustration in the Faberge book available.

But nothing could compare with the living topiary behind Blickling Hall, in the garden of a cottage on the estate and overlooking the grave of Humphry Repton in Aylsham churchyard.

He was the landscape artist who can be compared with 'Capability' Brown in visual achievements in gardens and parks of English great houses.

Repton was born at Bury St Edmunds, an example of how both Norfolk and Suffolk share the lives of notable people.

An example of men from the counties sharing a death ceremony was the beheading of John Wyndham of Felbrigg Hall, near Cromer, and Charles Tyrell of Gipping Hall, near Stowmarket, at Tower Hill on May 6 1502 for alleged treason.