Chapter II Summary

Chapter Two begins the author's journey proper as he boards an old diesel train in August of 1992 heading from Norwich to Lowestoft, in Suffolk.

Sebald describes travelling on the antiquated train through a landscape just as antiquated; the relics of old windmills and agriculture pile up in the landscape seen through the windows of the train as the narrator feels that he is almost travelling into a devastated landscape. It seems to him that Suffolk is at once an empty wasteland and also full of curiosities. Everywhere there is decay and the artefacts of society once rich and proud.

Sebald gets off at the stop for Somerleyton hall, and begins his pilgrimage there, to the grand mansion that was once held by many noble families of the Middle Ages, and currently owned by Lord Somerleyton, Her Majesty's Master of Horse (an...