Blakeney Barn Cottage

The charming, picturesque village of Blakeney is on the stunning North Norfolk coast. It is a very popular spot with its pretty harbour, delightful range of unique shops including fishmongers, butchers and galleries, gastropubs and its amazing landscape of marshes, sand hills and mud banks. You can walk straight from the cottage and enjoy this Instagram worthy estuary. Within this Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the Blakeney National Nature Reserve offers uninterrupted views of the coastline and you are very likely to spot migratory birds as well as the seals at Blakeney Point. Make sure you try one of the fresh crab sandwiches from the mobile van in the car park at the harbour. They are delicious! Trips can be taken from Blakeney and Morston Quay to visit the seal colonies. The pups are born during November to early January with over 2000 seal pups being born each year. It is a wonderful family outing.

A couple of miles away is the enchanting village of Cley-next-the-Sea. It offers wonderful views across the marshes, an outstanding deli, several art and pottery galleries and a smoked fish shop. The marshland was used for horse races up to the early 19th century as well as being a regular haunt for smugglers. The area is excellent for birdwatching. You should look out for ringed plovers, oystercatchers, brent geese and common teal.

For shopping, you can head to the stunning town of Holt. It is home to some excellent art galleries, antique and book shops, butchers, greengrocers, delicious eateries and a maze of 18th century Georgian buildings hiding in wonderful courtyards and alleyways. It looks so pretty at Christmas when all of the shops display brightly lit trees on the front of the buildings.

Further along the coast you can visit the wonderful town of Wells-next-the-Sea with its colourful beach huts, mammoth sandy beach sprinkled with dunes and grasses, pine forest, attractive harbour and its lovely leafy green ‘The Buttlands’, home to several gastropubs. You can walk all the way to Holkham Beach, one of the finest in the country. You can also take the Wells to Walsingham Light Railway for an afternoon excursion.

Holkham’s beach is totally unspoilt with a glorious semi-circle basin filling to form a spectacular shallow lagoon at high tides. The beach is famous for the closing scene in Gwyneth Paltrow’s ‘Shakespeare in Love’. The 25000 acre Holkham Estate is rich in history, architecture and wildlife. Holkham Hall is the seat of the Earl of Leicester, an 18th century mansion still lived-in as well as open to visitors. There are 6 acres of walled garden, walking and cycling paths, lakes, deer, a tree top high ropes course with its swings, bridges and ziplines, rowing boats, canoes and kayaks on the lake and a woodland play area.

Read more about Norfolk

Found in the East of England, Norfolk’s charms are as broad as the famous network of rivers that run through it. With an abundance of natural beauty and wildlife, this is one county where you can really kick back and enjoy some quintessential English countryside.

But it’s not just a rural idyll – there’s loads of stuff to see and do, which we’ve all put together in our handy Norfolk travel guide. And don’t forget, if you need a place to stay our luxury cottages in Norfolk offer everything you need for an amazing family holiday.

Download our Norfolk Travel Guide >>