Emma's Blog: Holiday #1 in 2021: Wells-next-the-Sea

10-17 May 2021

So yes, we did, is the answer to this previous post. This trip had originally been booked for May 2020 but had to be postponed for reasons connected to viruses and government overreach. At the time we were actually able to go, COVID restrictions had not been completely lifted – you e.g. couldn’t eat inside at a restaurant (though you could eat outdoors) and I don’t think Ruth and I could have stayed in a holiday rental with anyone besides each other. However, we were over the moon to be able to go away at all (and did manage an outdoor pub lunch and a couple of takeaways).

Where we stayed

16 The Granary, booked through Norfolk Hideaways. The Granary is a prominent building on Wells harbour - on the right in the picture with the green sticky-out bit (I believe the correct term is 'gantry'). Our rental was a ground floor one-bedroom apartment. The view of the harbour from the kitchen window was a major selling point, though the downside is that in order to have the dining table on a level with the window, the owners have had to install bar stools rather than regular dining chairs, which were fine initially but getting on and off them palled slightly as the week went on (or after a few drinks).

The Granary

The harbour from our kitchen window

We had visited Wells during our previous north Norfolk stay in 2019; additionally my parents have stayed there and recommended it. It’s a very nice town that combines easy access to beachy coast walks with narrow streets of little shops to have a browse in (plus a Co-op for ‘emergency’ purchase of dishwasher tablets and their ilk). It’s a working harbour. A sign outside the Wells Shellfish Handling Facility informed me that the main catch these days are crabs, lobsters and mussels. Whelks used to be a major catch, but aren’t any more.

Wells Shellfish Facility

The journey there

We stopped off to visit Castle Acre Priory, managed by English Heritage. This visit started off extremely unpromisingly – see clip below shot while sitting in the car park – but it then brightened up and we had a pleasant walk around, and even managed to have a picnic at a handy picnic table. Ruth doesn’t care for picnics much, but I had convinced her that it would be easier than trying to find somewhere for lunch.

Castle Acre Priory

From memory, I think we left the A1(M) at Peterborough and then drove (slightly north-)east to get to Castle Acre. The fenland scenery here is WEIRD if you’ve never seen it before – flat; isolated villages and houses; long straight roads alongside long straight drainage channels. We got more exposure to this scenery on our 2022 stay at King’s Lynn, of which more (possibly, if I can bestir myself) in a later post.

First full day: Wells and Marsh Tour

We had a late start and then walked out of the town up Beach Road to Wells Beach. Sandy, with beach huts.

Wells Beach

Walk from Wells up to the beach

In the afternoon I went for a shortish walk by myself along East Quay and a little way onto the Norfolk Coast Path towards Stiffkey. The weather turned a bit at this point, as the photo suggests.

Norfolk Coast Path, looking east from Wells

Wells East Quay

While walking to the beach in the morning, we’d seen a sign advertising an evening Marsh Tour, which sounded quite interesting, so we signed up. It was great – smallish boat with skipper and a handful of other people, but not busy. The guide pointed out various birds – I was quite excited to have a spoonbill pointed out (for this trip we had actually taken binoculars with us, which were useful). We saw a number of oystercatchers, as we did throughout the trip – cute little birds with red bills. The guide slightly embarrassed himself at one point when commenting on two birds who were at some distance from the boat – something along the lines of “Ah yes, now these two coming up look interesting, almost like [less common waterfowl X]”, at which Ruth piped up with “They look like mallards”. Guide: “Oh yes. Yes, they are mallards.”

Once we were some way out from Wells harbour the skipper stopped the boat and let us get out briefly, I think to demonstrate that the bits of land are quite solid - it looks rather like floating vegetation from a distance. The couple of male passengers decided to take the opportunity to have a wee (one had evidently had a couple of beers before boarding), while the women looked the other way and tutted.

After the tour we got fish and chips from French’s on the quayside. I don’t care much for chip shop chips so ordered a piece of fish and finished up a box of Waitrose “frites” that we’d brought with us. Ruth had the full monty. I think the fish was haddock but can’t remember. Once it’s been battered and dipped into boiling oil it all tastes pretty similar.

Second full day: Walsingham again; East Ruston Old Vicarage Garden

On our previous visit to Walsingham in 2019 we hadn’t got much of a look at the Catholic shrine due to our time being nearly up on the car park, so we (I) decided I wanted to go back for another look at it. We parked up and did the walk along the Pilgrim Way to Houghton St Giles, only to discover the Slipper Chapel was actually closed. Pfft. I did go and have a bit of a sit down in the Chapel of Our Lady of Reconciliation.

While browsing the info about shrines to Our Lady across the country, we felt Pretty Silly to discover that there’s actually one in Caversham. Inside the Church of Our Lady and St Anne, which is literally a couple of streets away from the house. As I write this I still haven’t visited it, but it’s still on that to-do list.

The East Ruston Old Vicarage Garden was somewhere Ruth had picked out while researching gardens to visit. It’s quite a way over south-east from Wells – 1½ miles from the North Sea, according to its blurb – so was a bit of a trek. It’s privately owned by two chaps who bought the vicarage in 1973, together with two acres of long grass. Over the years they have purchased more of the surrounding land – in fact quite a lot more of it, as the garden now apparently totals 32 acres. It’s now an RHS Partnership Garden. The ‘History’ page on their website has some interesting pictures of how the garden has developed over the years.

It's a gorgeous place – loads of different zones and the owners have clearly had fun with it.

We had tea - rather a dry scone, from memory, but a lovely outdoor setting. Partway through tea, a cat strolled among the tables with its kill, a rat, in its mouth. Brutish creatures.

Third full day: Blakeney and Cley

We caught a bus from Wells to Blakeney, and then walked to the neighbouring village of Cley-next-the-Sea.

Walk from Blakeney (on the left) to Cley, and out to the sea

Blakeney has a cute little quayside. Like all the ‘coastal’ villages on this stretch, it’s kind of no longer coastal as there are saltmarshes between the village and the actual sea. Blakeney Point is the place to see seals and their pups, at the right time of year, which we gathered this wasn’t.

Blakeney

Heading out from Blakeney on the Norfolk Coast Path

Marshes

We didn’t spend long in Blakeney but followed the Norfolk Coast Path (it’s also the Peddars Way, at this point) north from Blakeney quayside across the marshes. It curves round to the east and then goes back southwards into Cley, skirting an area labelled “Fresh Marshes” on the OS map. At Cley you have to walk along the road for a bit, crossing the River Glaven, and then through the village to pick up the path again. The path then heads northwards, reaching the actual sea this time, where there’s also a car park. It then continues eastwards past Salthouse, but we didn't walk any further in that direction.

Cley is a very pretty village but with a winding main street bedecked with parked cars that looks as if it would be hell to drive through. Somehow the coastal bus service manages to negotiate it and similar villages.

Ruth went into the ‘Made in Cley’ gallery while I walked on and located the spot where we could re-join the coast path. When Ruth caught up with me, impractically carrying a pot she’d purchased, we walked along the straight path leading to a car park and the sea, and a pebbly beach. You can apparently walk from Cley beach to Blakeney Point, although we didn’t - it would be rather hard-going on the shingle. We mooched around on the beach here for a bit before heading back into the village.

Norfolk Coast Path and the windmill at Cley

The beach at Cley

North of Cley, we walked past something labelled ‘Allan Williams Turret’. I assumed this was the personal folly of someone named Allan Williams, but it seems to have been a generic term as a Google search reveals that there are a number of these scattered around the country, relics of WWII. The Pillbox Study Group has this entry on them. This Flickr contributor’s commentary indicates that they rotated and were used for firing guns through – evidently there’s a pit beneath them where the gun operator stood. The sign next to it urges people not to use it as a litter bin.

The Allan Williams Turret near Cley

Back in the village, we had a drink and outdoor lunch at the George and Dragon. The first drink we’d had in a pub in a while – as I announced on Facebook.

Fourth full day: Blickling and posh takeaway

On the Friday (it was a Monday to Monday booking) we went to visit the Blickling Estate (National Trust, though I have a feeling our membership had already lapsed by the time we went here). We weren’t able to go inside Blickling Hall because of the COVID indoor restrictions still in place, so made do with a walk around the grounds. It was a duller day than previous and I think it did rain briefly. Despite this, we had a nice walk around the grounds – they tick most of the great estate boxes: walled garden, topiary, Doric temple, statues, lake. More unusually, there’s a mausoleum in the form of a pyramid – a surprising thing to suddenly come across in bluebell woods.

The Hall

Fun hedgery

Bit of statuary

Bluebells

The mausoleum

Later, we went for a late afternoon walk along the harbour at Wells, followed by a takeaway from the Wells Crab House. We’d had to order this earlier in the week, I guess because with seafood they had to know in advance what they had to get in each day. Lobster and crab, plus a few other bits. It was quite expensive but substituted for the going out for dinner we would normally have done at least once on holiday.

Takeaway from the Wells Crab House

Fifth full day: can't remember

Think possibly we had a poke around the town. We also walked out on the coastal path towards Stiffkey a little way and saw some avocets.

We saw avocets here, though they haven't shown up well in this photo

Final full day: walk to Holkham beach

We wanted to see the beautiful beach at Holkham again while we were here, so used our last day to walk from Wells to Holkham through the pines and then back along the beach to Wells. (Ruth might well have preferred to drive to Holkham beach, but I probably convinced her that a bracing walk would be just the thing.)

We walked along the path through the pines (Holkham Meals) to the Lookout café, where we had a rainy outdoor cup of tea. We then took the path leading to the beach. Ruth reckoned that we could walk back to Wells along the beach, which did turn out to be correct. MapMyWalk tracked this as a walk of just over seven miles. The tracking appears to show that we were actually in the sea at one point, but we weren’t as far as I remember.