myguideBritain Blog

Norfolk’s Birds and Broads

January 17th, 2008

Norfolk’s unusual landscape is one of the most remarkable in Britain. No mountains and valleys here - it’s wide and open as a result of the ice age Glaciers that covered Britain (as well as over a third of the world) for over 80,000 years until the great meltdown about 10,000years ago. I wonder what caused global warming at that time. Hairy Mammoth flatulence maybe?

The Norfolk Broads is Britain’s largest protected wetland and one of its largest inland waterways with the status of a national park. I fancied renting a sailing boat there and pottering around for a few relaxing days. My wife did not. The other option on the table was a long weekend bird-watching and walking, a few miles north on the North Norfolk coast. Since this option came with a few nights in a great hotel, my wife thought it a no brainer. We stayed at Titchwell Manor Hotel in Brancaster - an award winning hotel overlooking the salt marshes and only a 10 walk from the Titchwell RSPB bird reserve and the vast (think Sahara when the tide’s out) golden sands of Brancaster Bay.

If you’re a bird watcher the Titchwell reserve is famous for its Avocets, Bitterns and Marsh Harriers as well as the tens of thousands of Geese that migrate south from the Arctic for the winter. You walk through the reserve to get to the beach which is more like a desert when the sea is out. When the cold wind blows in this part of England it can chill you to the bones during the winter months so the thermal vest and long johns had been packed in readiness (and they were definitely needed!). It’s called a lazy wind by the locals. It’s too lazy to go around you so it goes through you. The beach here in common with most North Norfolk beaches are fabulous, and more importantly, deserted.

The villages in this part of the world don’t seem to have changed much since the time of the great sea hero Horatio Nelson who was born in Burnham Thorpe 250years ago where his father was the village rector. Cley next the Sea was a busy fishing village in the middle ages but the sea retreated leaving a mile of marshland in its wake and Cley no longer next to the sea . Burnham Market’s village green is surrounded by many fine buildings dating from the 17th and 18th century and it’s collection of small shops and boutiques attract a cosmopolitan bunch from far and wide. When we visited, the collection of Rolls Royces, Bentleys and Range Rovers in the car park of The Hoste Arms certainly showed why this village has become known as “Chelsea on Sea”.

Just a couple of miles from Burnham Market is the Palladian mansion of Holkham Hall built in 1732 by Thomas Coke, 1^st Earl of Leicester whose descendant the present Viscount Coke still lives in the Hall with his family. It’s one of the great Country houses of Britain that houses many art treasures by painters such as Rubens and Gainsborough and surrounded by a three thousand acre deer park.

It’s not an area where many of our guests venture because it’s a little off the beaten track and not easy to fit into itineraries when there’s so much else to be seeing in Britain during your stay. But if you do decide that this area is worth exploring then you won’t be disappointed

Entry Filed under: Activity, All of Britain, Coasts, England