North Norfolk: 5 highlights

We’ve just had a week in Thornham, a little to the east of Hunstanton, in North Norfolk. We’d rented a house so that we could spend time with the Bradburies and Charles without the space constraints of our respective homes. I reckon it was a bit of a rite of passage, such ‘whole family’ holidays are something you have to test at least once and by and large this one was pretty painless. The weather was generally good, the house was well equipped and we had no major rows.

It was a fairly low key holidays with no big spectacular events and my highlights are accordingly muted. But it’s often such highlights that you take away and characterise such a holiday.

1 the beach at Holkham

Norfolk beaches are renowned, they are vast and by and large unspoilt. The one at Holkham is no exception. There’s limited parking, there’s a well appointed RSPB lookout which is also a cafe with toilets, then a walk out through the dunes to a beach that goes on for ever. There’s a continual flow of people but because it’s so vast there’s no sense of crowding, dogs are allowed and there’s also paths for horse riding. When the tide’s out it’s a long walk!

2 family pricing on the North Norfolk Railway

Days out in the UK are not cheap, think in terms of up to £20 for adults and £10 for children, and so it is for the North Norfolk Railway. There’s no discounts for Seniors but it does offer family tickets and the man at the office reckoned that the definition of family includes grown up children and grandchildren so that saved us a couple of bob.

It’s not a narrow gauge railway of course. It was a victim of the Beeching cuts in the early 60s but despite the best efforts of British Rail to make it difficult the volunteers responsible managed to reopen the Holt to Sheringham section and to run an impressive engineering operation at Weybourn

3 vegan lunch at Holkham Hall

Holkham Hall is a private operation run to make money but strangely on the day we visited the Hall itself was closed. As a result of this and it being late in the season we enjoyed a pleasant visit without the crowds which might otherwise be expected. So come lunchtime we were able to eat at the Courtyard Cafe without queueing.

It was self service with a limited choice of main courses and a salad bar and I chose the later and had a bowl of five or six different salds. I realised after the event that I had of course had a vegan meal but it was delicious and, no doubt, healthy. I washed it down with a can of Adnams dry hopped lager.

5 blue butterflies at Sandringham

I guess the main attraction of a visit to Sandringham is its royal connection and the opportunity to visit the rooms which are still in use by the Royal Family. However although interesting in its own right the experience is not as impressive as the Royal Pavilion which I visited in Brighton last month. The grounds are pleasant without being spectacular but they do at least give you as good view of the two architectural halves of the building (see above).

There is a small bonus if you take the walk round the grounds and exit by the Magdalene Gate. There you get to see the Butterfly Meadow, an installation of steel model butterflies painted blue echoing the 2018 poppy installation at the Tower of London. These butterflies are for sale and raise money for The Norfolk Hospice.

6 the cliffs at Old Hunstanton

The beach at Old Hunstanton is almost as impressive as the one at Holkham but there’s a big difference. At Old Hunstanton there are cliffs and they’re striped because they expose different layers of sedimentary rock. The brown layer is a sandstone and there are also red and white chalk layers. The colour of the red chalk is due to iron staining. Way back in time I studied geology at Uni in my first year and appreciate what rock formations and other geomorphological structures and tell us about the origins of where we live today.

It was a good week but I wouldn’t want more and I was sadly disappointed by the food offerings. There was little evidence of the proximity of the sea in the menus on display and perhaps there was some evidence of end-of-season blues and the approaching threat of cost increases impacting both the establishments and their customers. However the three dinners we had ‘at home’ were exceptional!