It is true that the most successful excursions are irreproducible, marked as they are by unexpected yet serendipitous encounters that surprise and inform, revealing underlying characteristics of the city or region we hope to explore. Even if an author has resisted the temptation to fictionalise, a guidebook still can’t guarantee the same experience and circumstances are bound to differ, perhaps from the word go, perhaps further along the line. Nonetheless, we invite others to follow in our footsteps by describing our day, knowing theirs will have its own surprises and revelations.

Driven variously by curiosity, hunger or a mild Vitamin-D deficiency, I went out for many pleasant and enjoyable walks during my two-week residency in the Writing Centre cottage, either alone or with my co-resident, the Flemish poet Charlotte Van den Broeck, who I have been translating, but our most authentic trip and greatest bonding event was undoubtedly our excursion to the Norwich and Norfolk University Hospital.

Just as many museums require a time-slot booking in the Post-Covid era, an Accident & Emergency department – our specific destination – requires some pre-arrival preparation, but when the rewards are so evident this is a small price to pay. Illness is an option, of course, but difficult to coordinate within a tight schedule. Accidents, on the other hand, will happen, and once one has, you’re ready to go. The possibilities are myriad, but do try to ensure that yours remains minor. Without accepting any responsibility for the consequences, we can confide that our results were achieved through the combination of a fashionable artisanal loaf with a breadknife that was too blunt to gain immediate purchase on a hard crust, yet sharp enough to produce the required injury.

After stemming the worst of the bleeding and carrying out amateur group triage with the help of local and international video calls, the walk begins, departing the cottage through the rear exit and continuing in the same direction along St Ann Lane.  (Regardless of the degree of acquaintance of the two residents, the uninjured party should not be shy to lend a hand by physically supporting the other should faintness occur.) After just a few steps along the lane, we turn left on King Street. The forty or fifty metres that follow are perfect for a single tension-relieving anecdote, possible subjects being medieval architecture, anchoritism or the more recent seedy history of King Street itself. Turning right onto St Julians Alley, we proceed uphill past St Julians Church, where we feel a brief pang of guilt about not having visited it yet, decide that now is not the moment, and resolve to make amends before our departure.

Another right onto Rouen Road brings us to a moderately busy thoroughfare that suggests that the city is more fundamentally motorised than the pedestrian-friendly area around King Street and the charmingly meandering River Yare may suggest. With the NHS Walk-In Centre just far enough away for us to wonder if we’re going in the right direction, this is the time to consult Google maps, get more confused, pat pockets for reading glasses and gaze desperately in the wrong direction, before spotting the building right there on the corner with its little blue sign.

With an efficient yet compassionate nurse performing professional triage in the foyer, this is an exciting moment. Will the chosen injury allow the outing to continue, becoming a day trip perhaps, or will it end here? If your accident, like ours, has been perfectly executed, this will be a borderline decision that finally errs on the side of caution with instructions to proceed to hospital. (Spoiler alert: readers wishing to undertake this excursion themselves should stop here to maintain ignorance as to the location of the hospital; armchair explorers may continue.) This, of course, presents a transportation problem. As further evidence of the motorisation of Norwich, the nurse’s tone suggests the hospital might be quite close, but her surprise at hearing that we have walked up as well as in casts this in a different light. A taxi is the solution, apparently, but this requires more pocket-patting and phone-fumbling, exacerbated by the need to copy the number and then reproduce it in another field with the appropriate international prefixes. Is it +49 for the UK? Whoops, Kein Anschluss unter diese Nummer.

If, like us, you are now displaying exactly the right level of incompetence and confusion, you may be approached by a complete stranger who happened to overhear the nurse’s verdict and takes pity on you by offering to drive you to the hospital. This seems to be a Norwich thing. Having hopefully managed to maintain your ignorance of the precise or even general location of the NNUH you will be blithely unaware of the degree of generosity involved and readily allow your demurral to be brushed aside by the driver’s insistence. What follows is the lengthy motorised phase of today’s excursion. Depending on the identity of the driver, this may include discussions of the Norwich academic world from an admin perspective and a philosophical consideration of the relationship between karma and paying it forward. (Does the famous definition of a language as a dialect with an army also apply to superstitions and religions?)

After a seemingly interminable series of roundabouts that alternate with long stretches of main road (watch out for the University of East Anglia, home of the British Centre for Literary Translation, appearing on the right), we reach our destination, which is more or less comparable to A&Es visited in the past on several continents. The decor is perhaps a little shabbier and more provisional than the average of my own experience, but despite years of deliberate deflation, the political football NHS still seems to function, and even post-Brexit the treatment of injured EU citizens is friendly and efficient. One visit doesn’t prove anything, of course, but our concerns about the possible waiting time prove unfounded and less than an hour after completing the paperwork, the injured party has been whisked off to a treatment room, X-rayed and diagnosed, glued shut and bandaged.

At this stage a final bifurcation presents itself. For the more energetic, it’s worth noting that, by passing through the university and numerous residential suburbs, a direct route back by foot provides an opportunity to round things off with additional observations of these two essential aspects of Norwich life. Wearier or more sensitive souls, drained by the excursion’s impressions so far, may prefer to call it a day and simply jump on a bus. As did we.

David Colmer

David Colmer is an Australian writer and translator who lives in Amsterdam. He has won many prizes for his translations of Dutch literature, including the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (both with novelist Gerbrand Bakker), and major Australian and Dutch awards for his body of work. He has translated three collections by Flemish poet Charlotte Van den Broeck for Bloodaxe, the first two combined in Chameleon | Nachtroer (2019), and the third, The Inside of a Stone, published in February 2025. His residency was part of Flip Through Flanders, presented by Flanders Literature.