Reinterred: A Holkham Day Out

Today we had a trip to the North Norfolk Coast - to Holkham Hall.

It was a repeat of this day out in 2021.

This was the invite from Joyce...

"August 15th a return visit to Holkham Hall and a whole day out. We will start walking at 10.15am from the courtyard area where the toilets are. Our circular walk will head down to Holkham Dunes (cuppa here at The Lookout if you wish). ....and then to Burnham Overy Staithe where we will have a leisurely drink at The Hero pub. You can then take the bus back to Holkham as you will have walked 7 miles by now or walk the final 5 miles over to Burnham Thorpe Church (Nelson's dad was the Rector) and back to Holkham Hall. The park opens at 9am. Please bring plenty of food and drinks. £5 per car to park"

This time I had Sarah as well as Dawn with me.

This was our route.

Here are some of my photos.

We met in the courtyard as planned.

We passed the 18th Century Palladian hall at the start of our walk. It wasn't open to visit today. Read about its history here.

There had been a weekend Festival of Sport on until yesterday. These tents hadn't been taken down yet.

We walked along the edge of the lake...

...before turning to visit the the Coke monument. Holkham Hall was built between 1734 and 1764 by Thomas Coke, the first Earl of Leicester and remains the home of the Coke family.

From here there is a good view back to the Hall and the needle beyond.

We came a cross a herd of fallow deer among the trees, their tails twitching to chase away the flies.

We were joined by Jane who was staying in Sheringham and had taken the coastal bus to meet us.

We left the Holkham estate and walked up Lady Anne's drive towards the beach. We had a coffee stop at The Lookout, familiar from Day 2 of our Norfolk Coast Path walk in 2019.

Fun fact of the day, learnt from one of the tables in the cafe... A baby spoonbill is called.... a teaspoon!

We didn't see any spoonbills but we saw plenty of swallows.

We crossed the belt of pine trees passing through the Holkham Gap in the old sea wall.

...and emerged at the dunes, with a path leading to the dunes and sea beyond.

There was a carpet of sea lavender.

Then we had a long stretch westwards along the huge expanse of sand that is the beach, “wide sands where the sea draws breath”.

The windfarm in the distance would be producing a good amount of electricity today as there was quite a decent westerly breeze blowing...

...as you can maybe see from the ladies' hair.

We traversed a stretch of the beach where naturism is permitted, but without embarrassment.

We turned back inland here....

...and followed the raised path to Burnham Overy Staithe.

We found a bench for our lunch stop....

...and then visited The Hero for drinks. Another familiar sight, this was the end of Day 1 and start of Day 2 of our Norfolk Coast Path walk in 2019.

Dawn and Sarah left us here with Dan and Cathy to take the bus back to Holkham.

The rest of us carried on up Gong Lane, passing several impressive houses. We loved the lavender here.

We didn't get as far as the windmill, but could see it.

Looking east we could see St Wothburga Holkham church, peeking up through the trees.

We got a better view of St. Clement's Church, Burnham Overy Town. The Normans built it as a cruciform church with a central tower. However, by about 1200 the transepts were demolished and the tower shortened, all four archways blocked to create a bizarre narrow passage between nave and chancel. Aisles came to both sides of the nave and the south side of the chancel, but the first and last of these have also since been demolished, leaving the arcading in the new walls.

We didn't visit that, but continued on south to All Saints Burnham Thorpe church and explored inside. There were plenty of references to Lord Horatio Nelson, who was born at the nearby rectory, which no longer exists (his father was the rector)