Norfolk has many castles, museums and attractions to visit, but let’s face it, it’s the natural world you’ve really come here for, isn’t it? Our Seven Natural Wonders of Norfolk will open up a whole world of geology and history for you…
The Wensum Chalk River
Chalk streams in Norfolk include the Rivers Bure, Glaven, Stiffkey, Burn, Heacham, Ingol, Hun, Babingley and Gaywood, but the longest, biggest and most significant is the River Wensum, the most protected river in Europe – it has Site of Special Scientific Interest and Special Area of Conservation status for its entire length. In the Wensum Valley Project, it is the only river selected by Norfolk County Council for special status.
Enjoy a lovely riverside walk in Norwich, taking in Pull’s Ferry, a flint former ferry house – a canal used to run under the arch that the Normans used to transport Caen stone to build the Cathedral.
The Wensum reaches its confluence with the Rivers Yare and Tas beside Whitlingham Broad to the east of Norwich at which point the three become the Yare, which hits the sea at Great Yarmouth (mouth of the Yare, obvs). Honestly, Wensum does all the work, Yare gets all the credit!
The Cromer Ridge
The ridge is one of the highest areas of East Anglia at over 100 metres, is 8.7 miles long, and is characterised by its irregular and undulating wooded topography and substantial areas of heather in the west. Sunken lanes, caused by water erosion, are another characteristic of the ridge.
Head to Beacon Hill on the National Trust’s West Runton & Beeston Regis Heath and you’ll get the highest sea view in the region – perfect for your Insta account.
Blakeney Point and its wildlife
Managed by the National Trust since 1912 and within the North Norfolk Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, Blakeney Point is a 4-mile spit of flint-derived shingle and sand dunes, created by longshore drift across the River Glaven.
The spit is home to the largest seal colony in the country. If you want to get up close and personal, take a boat trip from Morston Quay with Beans Boats.
Blakeney Point and its wildlife
The Brecks
Described by Charles Dickens as ‘barren’ in David Copperfield, and by an observer in the 1760s as ‘sand, and scattered gravel, without the least vegetation; a mere African desert’, the Brecks looks very different now to most of its history, being home to the country’s largest low-lying pine forest.
Things to do here include hitting the heights at Go Ape, going down a Neolithic flint mine at Grimes Graves and visiting a moated stately home at Oxburgh Hall.
Barren desert to wildlife-friendly forest
Cromer Forest Bed and Deep History Coast
The Cromer Forest Bed Formation, aged between 500,000 and 2 million-years-old and stretching from Weybourne on the north Norfolk coast to Kessingland in north Suffolk, is rich in fossils, including the 650,000-year-old West Runton Mammoth, a 500,000 year old flint axe and the 850,000 year old footprints of early man – the first humans to enter Britain.
This is the best place in Norfolk to go rockpooling!
Flint – Norfolk’s building block
Flint is an inescapable and indelible part of Norfolk’s history and landscape. Look anywhere and you’ll see flint built churches, walls and other buildings.
Go back to pre-history and flint was used by our ancient relatives in Norfolk for make axe and spear heads – the oldest one found was discovered to be 650,000 years old!
Norfolk’s Great Chalk Reef
Dubbed ‘Britain’s Great Barrier Reef’, the Cromer Shoals Chalk Bed, created when dinosaurs ruled the earth, has been found to be the longest in the world – and it’s so close to the shore you could skim a stone out to it.
Unless you’re a diver, you won’t get to see it. However, you can eat what lives there – our eponymous Cromer Crab!
We’ve also compiled our Seven Wonders of Norfolk that include Blickling Hall, Norwich Cathedral, Cromer Pier and the Broads National Park.
