The north coast of Norfolk is full of the kind of flint cottages and windswept, wild beaches that will have you compulsively reaching for your camera.
A woodland walk smelling of pine forests and salt brings you out over shifting sand dunes onto a stretch of sand and sea that will clear the mind and re-energise you better than any corny spa
On a fine day, it’s hard to beat the spectacular views from a walk on Holkham beach and if the weather’s a bit iffy then there are low, timbered pubs with roaring fires to huddle in over a British Sunday lunch. You can also find several of the UK’s very best nature reserves.
Just a couple of hours drive from London, here’s the recipe for your perfect long weekend in the country.
Day one
Fly into London or Stansted. Cut out the hassle of public transport and hire a car.
Head straight to the The Cley Windmill as your base for the coastal tour. Book well in advance because if you miss out, you’ll kick yourself when you see the place. It is a bona fide windmill, built in the local flint, with a sensitive interior conversion and best of all, awesome views over the salt marshes and Cley bird sanctuary.
Price starts from €130 per person, per night on B&B basis. Visit www.cleywindmill.co.uk or call +44 1263 740209.
Day two
Morning: get up for a brisk walk on the marshes and let the smell of the sea and the wild winds in the reeds help you work up an appetite for the windmill’s excellent breakfast. Then head for Cley Bird Sanctuary for views of the elusive bittern, marsh harriers and bearded tits.
Lunch: head to the Blakeney Hotel (www.blakeney-hotel.co.uk; +44 1263 740797) for a feast of local food such as Norfolk dapple cheese souffle with apple salad (€12.50) or homemade fish pie of poached salmon, cod and smoked haddock topped with creamy mash (€13.65).
Afternoon: Blakeney Point is a three-mile-long shingle spit, an enormous mound of pebbles rising out of the sea under the wide, ever-changing Norfolk skies. It’s attached to the mainland at Cley and you can access it on foot here; crunching the stones is hard going but fun.
Otherwise, you can take a boat from Morston Quay or Blakeney for amazing views of common and grey seals. Trips run throughout most of the year so you can experience the point basking in the heat of summer or in a flurry of winter snowflakes.
Most boats will drop you at the visitor centre on the spit to enjoy this wild landscape and watch birds such as sandwich and little terns, oyster catchers, ringed plover and pink-footed geese.
Dinner: if you are feeling a bit flash, have dinner at Morston Hall, two miles from Blakeney. It has a Michelin star and is set in a 17th- century country house. Dinner costs €80 and everyone is served at the same sitting at 8pm from a fixed menu.
You might not ordinarily choose lightly smoked Norfolk horn lamb with salt baked celeriac or black headed sea bream with curly kale and bouillabaisse but trying something different and exquisitely cooked is part of the appeal.
If dinner would break your budget, book in for Sunday lunch at €45 instead. Chef Galton Blackiston is a UK TV star.
Visit www.morstonhall.com or call +44 1263 741041.
Day three
Morning: head to Holkham for one of Britain’s most outstanding beaches. A woodland walk smelling of pine forests and salt brings you out over shifting sand dunes onto a stretch of sand and sea that will clear the mind and re-energise you better than any corny spa.
You can walk for literally miles, watching sandpipers and dunlin feeding on the shoreline. Holkham changes with the weather, spotlit and glittering under the sun or brooding and wild in a rainstorm, but it’s always spectacularly beautiful.
Visit www.holkham.co.uk for information on the beach, estate and surrounding businesses.
Lunch: try rose lemonade and some local fish at the Rose Garden Cafe in the Ancient House, Holkham Village.
Afternoon: you can retreat to Holkham Hall, where The Duchess with Keira Knightley was filmed, for opulent sitting rooms and 25,000 acres of deer park with seemingly endless groomed gardens.
But if the weather is good and the call of the wild still strong, then head on to Titchwell. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (www.rspb.org) has an unmissable reserve there. Friendly volunteers will tell you all about what you are likely to see and then you’re free to wander boardwalks and paths past saline lagoons, reedbeds and on to the sandy beach. There are 20 species of wading bird alone.
To beat the afternoon dip in energy levels, the café has some rather excellent locally make cake.
Dinner: The Victoria (+ 44 1328 713230) at Holk-ham is a gastropub serving excellent British fare such as crabs from Cromer, mussels from Brancaster or venison from the Holkham Estate. Most major ingredients come from less than five miles away and the freshness is reflected in the taste.