)
For a taste of a traditional English seaside resort, there’s no better than Great Yarmouth and its Golden Mile of amusements, rides, attractions and shows. Think Santa Cruz Boardwalk or Coney Island x10.
Here you’ll find the last original complete circus building in Britain that hosts shows with an amazing water spectacular and a 1930s wooden rollercoaster that doesn’t have automatic brakes!
The Big Wheel at Great Yarmouth’s Golden Mile of seaside fun.
Cromer, with Europe’s last end-of-pier theatre, and Sheringham have an olde world charm that take you back to the time when Victorians first visited on the newly-established stream train network.
The Victorian pier and beach at Cromer.
The area has a history of agriculturally-minded landowners who built magnificent mansions at Palladian Holkham Hall, Felbrigg and Blickling.
At Burgh Castle near Great Yarmouth you’ll find the largest remaining Roman building in Britain.
The magnificent Palladian Holkham Hall is one of many stately homes by the Norfolk coast.
All along this coast you will find fabulous stretches of unspoilt sandy beaches.
Horse-drawn landau and land train on the Golden Mile at Great Yarmouth.
Getting around
Walking and cycling are the ideal way to properly appreciate the coast and countryside. There are numerous trails and paths where you can escape the crowds.
In Great Yarmouth in the Summer take a road train along the Golden Mile or enjoy a leisurely horse-drawn landau.
The Blakeney Point seal colony is the largest in the country. Visit by boat.
Don’t miss
Take a boat trip from Morston Quay with Beans Boats to see the largest seal colony in Britain or visit Happisburgh, with its iconic red and white-striped lighthouse, to see the spot where the oldest human footprints outside the Great Rift Valley in Africa, where humans came from, were found just 20 years ago. This is the Deep History Coast.
You’d be in the company of Winston Churchill if you stay at The Sea Marge in Overstrand. He spent time here with his mother Lady Randolph Churchill – it’s claimed he made a phone call from here to mobilise the British Navy at the start of World War I, when he was the First Lord of the Admiralty.
The Time & Tide Museum at Great Yarmouth will take you back to a time when the herring industry dominated the town – by 1913 the town had more than one thousand boats, exporting fish to Russia, Indian and Africa, and it’s said you could walk across the river Yare boat-by-boat. On one day alone the fleet brought in 80 million fish!
Fish and chips overlooking the Victorian pier at Cromer.
Discover the taste
At Great Yarmouth the seafront offers traditional ice creams, candy floss and freshly made sugary donuts (try eating without licking your lips… impossible).
In Cromer get traditional fish and chips from Mary’s or No 1. Eat them on the premises or get a take-out and sit on the promenade, overlooking the North Sea and Victorian Pier. Or eat the eponymous Cromer crab – it will be on the menu everywhere. They’re plump and succulent because they feed off the world’s largest chalk reef that’s just offshore.
Take a stroll around Great Yarmouth market place, and enjoy some traditional chips.
Live like a local
Chips on Great Yarmouth market. Lashings of vinegar and salt. It’s what we do. As you eat them, take a tour down the historic Yarmouth Rows, tight lanes where the fishermen and their families used to live. There’s a recreation of a Row in the fabulous Time & Tide Museum.
Useful websites Visit Great Yarmouth and Visit North Norfolk
