Norfolk family holidays and breaks

Norfolk Best Beaches and Resorts for Families

• Explore the unspoilt beaches, traditional seaside resorts and coastal creeks stretching from the resort town of Hunstanton, in the north, along the coast to Holkham Beach and Wells-next-the-Sea with their vast expanses. At Holkham, visit historic Holkham Hall & Estate with its family activities including tractor-trailer tours and pond-dipping, and its parkland with a lake, a nature trail and deer.

• Potter around the old port of Wells-next-the-Sea, now a little inland from its beach, and full of shops, cafés and pubs. 

• Visit the National Trust-owned shingle spit at Blakeney Point – a National Nature Reserve you can reach from Blakeney village. Boat trips from nearby Morston Quay take you to the seal colonies, or you can follow the North Norfolk Coast Path to Stiffkey Saltmarshes. 

• Head for the sandy beaches, usually safe for swimming, that begin at Sheringham and Cromer and go right down to the border with Suffolk. Cromer Pier’s Pavilion Theatre hosts a traditional summer show plus other entertainment, or visit Cromer Museum next to the church of St Peter and St Paul.

• Kiss me quick at Great Yarmouth, Norfolk’s biggest seaside resort, with sandy beaches backed by the Golden Mile of amusement arcades, the Pleasure Beach funfair and Britannia Pier with its shows, rides, arcades and food vendors, Great Yarmouth is the gateway to the Norfolk Broads.

Norfolk Broads with Kids

• When you’re not messing about on the water, visit the Museum of the Broads at Stalham, where you’ll find out how these navigable rivers and lakes were created by medieval peat extraction. Pretty Wroxham village is regarded as the centre of the Broads.

•  At nearby Hoveton, spend a day at BeWILDerwood, a woodland adventure playground with zip wires and treehouses.

• Head to the Norfolk Broads Cycling Centre to hire bikes and buy cycle route maps covering the whole of the Broads.

Norfolk History and Culture

• Learn about how Norfolk has long been home to famous people, reaching as far back as Queen Boudicca in Roman times, and how many have left historic buildings behind them. Henry VIII’s second wife, Ann Boleyn, is said to haunt the National Trust’s Blickling Hall near Aylsham; Horatio Nelson – later Lord Admiral – is remembered in the church at his birthplace, Burnham Thorpe; then there’s the Queen’s country home at Sandringham.

• Not far from Cromer, explore the National Trust’s Felbrigg Hall, a beautifully restored Stuart property with wonderful gardens and woods to explore.
 
• In Great Yarmouth, tour the National Trust’s Elizabethan House Museum, where kids can dress up in Tudor costumes and find out what the house was like in Victorian times. By it at South Quay are The Old Merchant’s House in all its Jacobean glory, and Row 111, another 17th-century house but this one preserved as it was in the 1940s. 

• Visit lovely villages, many with wonderful markets or local food shops, and discover Norfolk’s county town, Norwich – a handsome old city with one of the finest Norman cathedrals in the country. It’s a lovely city to walk around, with a lively market and medieval streets. Norwich Castle Museum & Gallery has plenty of hands-on displays to please youngsters, while older children may enjoy the modern Sainsbury Centre art museum at the University of East Anglia. 

• In West Norfolk, be surprised by King’s Lynn, a wealthy port until the 'discovery' of America, with superb old port buildings and the charming Lynn Museum, home to a life-size replica of Seahenge, a Bronze Age timber circle discovered at Holme-next-the-Sea in 1998.