Norfolk notes - Holkham Hall

Holkham Hall is a large stately home. You don't get to own, and hold on to, a stately home these days unless you know a thing or two about business and it appears that they have finally got wise to people parking and having a picnic, enjoying the grounds and the view and even the benches, all for free.

So they have introduced a parking fee, cheekily redeemable at their shop or cafe. This means that having stumped up for parking you feel compelled to get value for money by blowing even more cash on coffee. Not this chap, I had my flask tea and was bloody well going to enjoy the view sitting on the...the bastards have removed the benches! There's nowhere to sit. Well, apart from in the rental car, obviously, putting down the middle seats to form a table and essentially having quite a passable dining experience.

But my plan next time is to turn up with the full pic nic rig. Chairs, folding table, hot and cold dishes, butler, the works. Well worth a couple of quid.

Actually I shouldn't gripe as they've reduced the cost of parking on the beach. The problem is that Holkham Beach is now the home of what can only be described as quite a lot of marshy type weed near the shore. And because it's probably protected or endangered then they can't just get rid of the stuff. So you have to detour around or squelch through it to get to the pristine beach...or walk from Wells, as we did one day.

One unlucky tourist wasn't walking anywhere. While we strolled a coastguard 4x4 retrieved a woman who had twisted her ankle. What surprised me was how precious the driver of the emergency vehicle was about getting his truck up the beach.


Maybe the beach buggers suspensions as efficiently as it does ankles, or maybe it was a new truck but you would rather hope that he would scream along the surf line and do one of those handbreak turn stops that shower onlookers with sand. The whole experience was like an incredibly crap version of Baywatch.

Norfolk notes - parking

As well as large buses on narrow roads, the other thing we encountered with the car was the posh car surcharge. While the majority of beach car parks are standardised pay and display jobs, there are one or two independents who vary their price according to season, weather, time of day, whim and, of course, whether they can be arsed spending the day in a shed. Examples of fluctuating prices include one where the chalk board announcing the discounted parking price included 'end of season sale'.

Ah, and a car park near some golf links. Since I've been coming here it's been looked after by a bloke in a caravan. The same bloke. The area is also home to, arguably, the best golf links in the world and I recall the time he advised me 'not to park at the far end, because that's where the helicopter will be landing because some golfers want to play this afternoon'. In that sentence the word 'tossers' is silent, but he managed to convey it.

Normally, my ride of choice is an ageing three door job. Nothing special. What it does do, however, is get you a discount. Discount is also available if you have a couple of cars, where he offers a group rate in exchange for the first one always offering to pay for both cars at full price. Such offers of generosity are rewarded. I've also seen posh cars (of which there are many in this part of the world) turn round rather than pay full price, I guess you get a posh car by being tight.

When we rolled up in the Beast, we got whacked for the full charge for the day. Luckily I had my wee bag o'change and was able to stump up, but wondered if I would have been charged the same had I been in my little motor. Maybe he charges by the foot, like they do with canal moorings. In which case God knows what the driver of the coach that delivered the school geography party would have had to pay.


Mostly though, it was standardised charges, paid for at a sort of parking totem that depending on your point of view and location, either ripped you off totally for a short brisk walk on the beach, amazed you by allowing all day parking for a florin or was shameless in trying to attract custom to competing seaside towns by giving you the first half hour for tuppence, just long enough to visit the bank, post office and many tat shops the place boasts. Somebody, somewhere is making an awful lot of money (a lot of it mine) out of owning a patch of gravel that just happens to be near a beautiful beach.


At least now they've stopped all that 'enter your number plate' nonsense, meaning a return to the charming scenes of people with ninety seconds left on their ticket trying to give it to somebody who has just arrived and hence score a small but important victory over those that, despite our most charitable instincts, we still can't help but suspect are ripping us off.

More important than the charges though, more important than the opening and closing times, more important even than knowing if anyone is in the little shed today collecting money or if you are going to thrillingly park for free is the small sign at the start of the beach road that you ignore at your peril and states 'beach road floods at...' then gives a time. This is certainly a reminder that one is a visitor to strange parts. This isn't 'road liable to flooding' or even a temporary sign reading 'flood', this is a sign telling you that this road is going to flood tonight and you had better be gone by then. You had also better hope that the guy in the shed is not nursing a grudge against all you folk in your posh cars and that he can read tide tables correctly.

Postcard from Norfolk – Brancaster Beach

One of the best beaches in the world is Brancaster Beach in north Norfolk. It has a constant breeze blowing along it, meaning that it is beloved of kite flyers and kite surfers. This means there is always something to watch, the kites themselves if you like that sort of thing, or, even more entertaining, bickering couples trying to get their kites aloft in a truly world-class wind. The wind also ensures that any litter on the beach is heavy and, as such, can’t really be classed as litter at all. Crisp packets and other gossamer trash don’t stand a chance, being blown tumbling the length of the beach towards the sort of post codes where these things inevitably turn up (thinking about it, such a phenomenon could explain the multiplicity of aged and faded tat that I find in my front yard). The wind also blows sand-devils, making the beech at once eerie and fascinating.

For those that like value for money, this is the beach for you. When the tide is out you get a LOT of beach. On some days I’m pretty sure you could make it all the way to Holland by just rolling up your trousers.

I’ve been on the beach in summer, pitched a camp with windbreaks and sun-tents, folding chairs and rugs because when I go on holiday I like to take more kit than a reasonably funded Victorian era to the African interior, back when servants were cheap and tents were made of teak, ivory, canvas and came with panelled studies with stoves. In the summer the waves actually do come reasonably close to the seashore proper and for those of us used to visiting off season, the effect is slightly claustrophobic. The reason that the sea needs to be so near the beach of course is that it is obliged to make some child’s holiday complete by eroding the castle they have just spent the last three hours building, thereby handing out an important life lesson about the permanency of things.

The beach kiosk at Brancaster beach is so successful that it’s actually doubled in size. Possibly the accommodate improved kitchen facilities (BLTss recommended) and possibly to stock not just bucket and spades but small amounts of earthmoving equipment for children returning for a second year who have not forgotten last year’s erosion fiasco and have spent the intervening year studying drainage, levees and canal systems and are about to progress from castles to fortresses.

But the stand out attraction at Brancaster is Parking Bloke. The entrance to the car park is marked by a tiny caravan, which gently rocks in the wind. With the white coat of authority and a roll of tickets, he is one of the most charming features of the north Norfolk coast.

It costs a couple of quid to stay in the car park, no big deal. What’s most amusing though is seeing tourists pitch up in truly monstrous 4x4s and baulk at paying a couple of quid to park, pulling a U turn and zooming off in a cloud of indignation and planet-buggering pollution. What’s even funnier is checking out the faces of the blonde girlfriends up for a dirty weekend and their realisation that even though the bloke owns an expensive 4x4, he’s a cheapskate and is unlikely to lavish her with jewellery, ponies, holidays, cosmetic surgery and handbags.

Why do the 4x4s have to be in the car park at all? Why don’t they just park on the beach or somewhere in the tidal marshes. That way we could all laugh our arses off when the tide comes in and they discover that what they really, really need to cope with the off-road conditions of the north Norfolk coast is a boat.

Parking Bloke has seen it all. He’s in his little caravan in all weathers, rain or shine. My favourite experience – being instructed to avoid the top end of the car park, because that’s where the helicopter carrying the golfers playing the Royal Brancaster were arriving. From the gleam in his eye, I knew he was going to charge them for parking.