The Windmill

While looking for a restaurant where we could meet up with friends in north Norfolk, I came across Cley Windmill. I had passed it, and hardly noticed the fact that it was a restaurant. But it is more – it is a hotel. So we booked to stay there to belatedly celebrate my birthday last week. It gets booked up ahead, so we had to have a ground floor room, but still with access to the balcony (Is it called a balcony?). It was cottagey, quirky, and brilliant.

We walked to Blakeney, and back through the salt marshes,

and on Saturday, walked Cley salt marshes, calling in at the Visitor Centre.

Dinner was wonderful, despite there being no choice. Chicken breast, but so tasty and so tender. Starter and pudding also so good. We received complimentary red wine and port, because it was a birthday celebration. Amazing. And Wendy treated me. What a wife – Wonder Woman Wendy indeed, as she is known.

The sails are fixed these days, so it seems. Once they flew round with the wind howling off the sea, which was alongside the mill only a century ago. So much has changed.

Do I have the wind in my sails? As a born-again Christian, I believe my source of power is the Holy Spirit, a real Person Who empowers, transforms, directs, provides….. A windmill without wind is static and no good for what it was designed for. Cley Windmill was a reminder that I need to take practical steps (prayer, Bible reading, meditation on Scripture) to keep the wind of the Spirit in my sails.

But that mill is a great hotel. I want to go there again!