Global warming or not, never bet on the British summer. The wettest June and
July on record couldn’t possibly be followed by the wettest August, right?
Nor was it, but for one corner of the kingdom over which was moored its very
own 24/7 monsoon. Norfolk, as the water conservation notice by the
laundrette in our camp site informed me as I dried our clothes, enjoys the
lowest rainfall of any English county. Well, it was making up for it now.
Yet my extended family (two kids, five adults) had a ball in our five days
under canvas and (almost) underwater on the county’s north coast. If ever
the sun comes out, we’d move right here, and quite probably to the Old Brick
Kilns camp site, nestling amid tame moorhens and bunnies outside Barney,
near Fakenham.
Ever tried to pitch a brand-new tent in the rain without having a dry run in
your garden first? You will know how Houdini must have felt struggling with
the straps of his straitjacket while chained in a water tank.
Having, as camping virgins, amazed ourselves by thus pitching our
Blacks-supplied tents with the invaluable help of our next-car neighbours
Terry and Jill, we’d scoff at anything less than a plague of frogs next
time.
Emerging from the Aunty Beryl’s-curtains cocoon of your Orla Kiely sleeping
bag to face the morning downpour is an ordeal. But if there’s a comparably
sized creature to make the dampest of us feel almost dry by comparison, it’s
the seal.
Summering on the sands at Blakeney Point lounges a whole colony of common
seals, as we’re informed by our Temples Seal Trips pilot while puttering out
of Morston.
And common they certainly are, yawning, scratching their Burberry-beige rolls
of fat and dropping their aitches, their cheeky pups capering in our wake,
mooning and barking rude words. For the binoculared twitchers aboard,
though, the seals are an ill-mannered gauntlet to be run in pursuit of the
far better bred bird life.
“I don’t want this trip ever to end!” exclaimed my seven-year-old, the mere
thought of a boat normally enough to make her sick on the spot.
Back on solid ground, Norfolk abounds in the trimmed greensward, noble
statuary, leather-bound libraries and vintage car collections of the
traditional tourist stately home, and none is statelier than Holkham Hall.
The 600 acres of lake and deer park at this Palladian pile are attractions in
themselves, the nature trail having all the enduring old-fashioned appeal of
Ladybird books for our pair of city-bred urchins. Their eagerness to keep
’em peeled reached indoors, too, with an impromptu willy count among the
undraped heroes and putti in marble and oil: can your kids beat 13?
Nature half-tamed is the theme of Bewilderwood near Wroxham, an adventure
playground on a Fangorn Forest scale. It has its own pocket-hobbit populace
of shadowy eco-elves called Twiggles guiding you through a trail that is so
mazily amazing, tree-swingingly tremendous and wobbly-walkway-wise wonderful
that it has no need to pile on the cutes to captivate, quote, “kids of all
ages from one to 81” (nor could this particular kid resist a smile when
cruising the Dismal Dyke).
And so to the inner man. North Norfolk boasts both old-school hotel dining
rooms, where well-heeled local elders chew Dover sole in gloomy silence, and
much livelier child-friendly establishments such as the Hero in Burnham
Overy Staithe.
But it’s worth going miles out of your way to eat at the Walpole Arms in
Itteringham, an 18th-century inn that left our party drooling over every
mouthful of buttery samphire, brine-cured salmon and duck confit,
washed down by the no less local and delicious Walpole ale in front of a
blazing fire. Three courses without drinks cost about £25 per head. We
should have brought our sleeping bags and stayed for breakfast.
Cromer and the beaches? Funnily enough, in our rainproofs we weren’t tempted,
though they rank among the best in Europe. But we know where they are for
next time. And there will be a next time – even if it rains.
The Old Brick Kilns, pitch including two adults, one car and electricity,
£18.50 per night, 01328 878 305, www.old-brick-kilns.co.uk;
Temples Seal Trips, adult £7.50, child £4, 01263 740 791, www.sealtrips.co.uk;
Holkham Hall, family ticket £25, 01328 710 227, www.holkham.co.uk;
Bewilderwood, family ticket £45, 01603 783 900, www.bewilderwood.co.uk;
the Hero, 01328 738 334; the Walpole Arms, 01263 587 258, www.thewalpolearms.
co.uk; Rural Escapes brochure, www.enjoyengland.com/ruralescapes
