We had a big day planned today so we managed to get out the door a little earlier, heading off at 9. It was about an hour’s drive up to Cromer, on the coast of North Norfolk, our first stop for the morning. After finding a park - there being card payments on machines in England has made this much easier than in Wales - we wandered down to the waterfront. There was a gorgeous old school pier with a restaurant at the end, overlooked by an imposing Victorian hotel, and we followed the steps down to walk along the pier for a better view. The tide was fully in and quite high around the pier, leaving a pebbly little beach that people were already sitting on. After a walk along the pier and the beach we headed back up for a loop through town, stopping to grab a coffee and a ‘millionaire’s shortbread’ (caramel slice) from a cute bakery. There was a huge Norman-style (enormous stone turret) church in the centre of town and lots of cute little shops. It was very busy though and the masses of people were making us a bit nervous so we soon headed back to the car.

From Cromer it was only about 20 minutes drive down the road to Baconsthorpe castle - in theory, anyway. Reality found us on some of the bumpiest, windiest roads yet and found some borderline-four-wheel-driving at the end! Who said a Ford Fiesta couldn’t go off-road! Annoyingly just as we pulled up, a carload of two families with four very noisy primary-aged boys rocketed up behind us and shouting was our soundtrack for walking around the castle. However it was still a very cool site, remarkably well preserved.  You walked through the outer gate house and crossed a little (reconstructed) drawbridge that took you through the inner gatehouse, which still had fully intact rooms with ceiling details. The wall around the castle courtyard had beautiful arches that looked like they could collapse at any moment but were holding on! Apparently the ‘castle’ was actually a stately home of a family who ultimately fell into debt and had to sell off parts of the castle to dig themselves out. The outer gatehouse was still used as a home well into the 18th century though, which explained why it was better preserved. 

After some more off-roading we headed off to Holt, where we were going to have lunch. This was another historic market town and clearly had enough of a reputation for it too to be packed with people.  We found a car park and walked (masks on) through the crowds to the pub we’d read about in the Good Pubs Guide, which we found surprisingly empty! They had gluten free bread so we both got a sandwich for lunch before heading back out for a little walk around. It looked like a cute town but was ultimately a bit too busy for the current circumstances so we ended up retreating to the car and heading off again. 

Our next stop was Binham Priory, the ruins of a Benedictine monastery which was in use until the dissolution of the monasteries in the mid-1500s. This was a really impressive ruin site, not least because you drive through the original gatehouse to enter the carpark! The nave of the monastery is still the functioning church of the village, and the ruins surround it. There were a few people visiting gravesites in front of and around the church, but we took a separate path that took us for a tour around the priory ruins. There wasn’t a lot of information about the use of the monastery but there were little plaques on parts of the ruins explaining the different rooms. The cloisters were very obvious, as was the well, but the rest of it was hard to discern, aside from a fireplace here and there. We did a good loop of the site, keeping our distance from the enormous towers still standing in isolation, before heading back to the car. 

From Binham we had a short but wiggly drive to Wells-Next-To-The-Sea, a town that TimeOut had recommended for a visit. On arrival (and after parking our car on a street called The Buttlands) we headed off towards the waterfront only to find it jam packed with people. There were a couple of cute stores that we poked out noses into but for the most part it was just too busy. I’d read that there were cute little beach huts, but the ‘waterfront’ we could see in town was a tidal river, as the beach was further along. We committed to walking and took about 20 minutes to walk along the breakwater in very gusty wind before we got to the beach. Of course when we got to the beach, it was blowing sand all over the place so after stopping for a couple of pictures of the cute beach huts (and the lack of any water, the tide was so far out!) we headed to a little beach cafe. We were both pretty tired and got a drink to pep us up before heading all the way back to the car. The dinner plan for the evening is a picnic so we stopped over at the Co-op in town, as we were sure where else we’d be able to, and grabbed a few supplies before we left. 

After that stop we headed inland again, making our way along some smaller roads until we found ourselves at a little farm. Here we found All Day Brewing - although we were also surprised to find a bike shop, a glamping site and the owners making pizzas in a proper pizza oven for a bunch of people sitting at the brewery taphouse. What a cool place to stay! We definitely noted that one down for future notice. We’d just stopped by to pick up a takeaway order though, so we grabbed those and headed back to the car. 

The next stretch was a longer drive, a bit over an hour back down to Frog’s Farm in North Suffolk, which we’d passed on the way up. When we’d googled it we’d found that it was a sunflower farm that was doing a ‘sunset and prosecco’ session on Friday night so we signed up. When we got there we were directed to park up in a spot in a field and were given tickets to go and collect our glasses of Prosecco. After chatting to the girl at the counter, we took our glasses over to the sunflower field, where we found very few people and plenty of beautiful flowers! I hadn’t realised how many varieties of sunflower there were and we spent quite a bit of time admiring the flowers and the bumblebees sitting on them - and taking plenty of photos. After we’d had a look around we lay our ‘picnic blanket’ (towel) out and had a delicious picnic dinner alongside our glasses of Prosecco. As the sun started to set we went back to a different part of the field and took some more photos before it started to get a bit busier and we decided to head off while it was still light. It was about a 45 minute drive so we got back to Wymondham around 9:30 and headed to bed for an early night.