Brecks & Beaches

What better way to set the scene for a day with history around every corner, than pedaling out through lands associated with ancient Queen Boudicca and her Iceni tribe, as well as the Tudor queens who crossed Oxburgh Hall’s moat?

Little lanes lead alongside farm and woodland to the Regency market town of Swaffham, home to a wedge-shaped market place, a fine domed Buttercross and impressive lantern-towered church complete with a hammerbeam roof adorned with 190 carved angels. It’s an awesome sight before you wing it towards the historic walled gardens of West Acre, and the perfect medieval town in microcosm – Castle Acre.

Sleeping as it has for centuries alongside the River Nar, Castle Acre is an inspirational site (and sight!) which just oozes history at every turn – here, the town’s Baileygate; there, one of England’s largest and best-preserved priories, dating back to 1090 – and, to top it all, William de Warenne’s 12th century castle earthworks.

You’ll find more monastic connections too in the form of ancient Abbey fishponds up at Great Massingham, as your route takes you over the ‘roof of Norfolk’ (a towering height of 95m!) through peaceful countryside to settle down in the Fakenham area and your accommodation for the next two nights.

Overnight: In the Fakenham area

Mileage: Min 31 Max 30 Rec 39

The area of Fakenham, a traditional market town, makes a perfect base for a choice of circular routes exploring North Norfolk and the coast.

Explore Little Walsingham, where a vision in 1061 inspired the building of a replica of the Holy House in Nazareth. Enclosed in a stone chapel in the 15th century, it became a place of pilgrimage second only to Canterbury.

Choose to ‘steam’ along to the Norfolk Coast courtesy of the Wells to Walsingham Light Railway, or set your sights on the North Sea horizon and cycle to Wells-next-the-Sea. The ancient quay and, narrow streets full of flint-faced cottages and little shops are a must to explore in Wells.

Swing by the sand dunes of Holkham Bay close to the Earl of Leicester’s Palladian pile, Holkham Hall, and take in the sleepy creeks and backwaters of Burnham Overy Staithe for a real sense of the hauntingly beautiful nature of the North Norfolk Coast.

Overnight: In the Fakenham area

Mileage: Min 23 Max 39

A day full of Norfolk insights and church treasure treats as you push your pedals gently back to Oxborough.

Set out with the meandering River Wensum for company, pedaling south to Gressenhall and The Farm & Workhouse Museum of Norfolk Life. From dark tales of workhouse days to brightly coloured gypsy caravans, Norfolk cottage gardens and rare breed farm animals, this is a fascinating living museum full of contrasts and insights into the rural farming communities and medieval textile industries which put the county on the European map.

Passing the market town of Dereham, little lanes lead to Bradenham, home to the bold, buttressed, but sadly redundant church of St Mary’s, cared for by the Churches Conservation Trust. The ‘lost’ village of Houghton-on-the-Hill nearby may be no more, but its church still stands and is definitely worth the gentle detour. Some of its early wall-painting date from 1090, others from the 1400s – testimony to the centuries when the community here was both wealthy and important.

North Pickenham has an unusual history too – as a corner of Norfolk once belonging to Yorkshire! As well as medieval connections with Richmond Castle in northern England, the village has close links with America since USAAF airmen flew B-24 Liberator bombers from its WWII airfield nearby.

Swinging back via Swaffham, why not call in at the market town’s museum and heritage centre? It’s full of tales from the fortune-seeking pedlar who returned from his travels to find his crock of gold back home in his garden to local Edwardian gent, Howard Carter, who found his golden opportunity for fame and fortune in Egypt’s ‘Valley of the Kings’ and the tomb of Tutankhamun.

Overnight: Oxborough, by Oxburgh Hall Estate.

Mileage: Rec 33 Min 31 Max 33

It’s your call this morning – lock up your hire bikes and head home if you will, or alternatively make the most of a great little circular day ride, created just because we’d hate you to miss a truly different ancient site like no Norfolk other!

About a quarter of the ride is off road, along gravel forest tracks as you pedal via Breckland woods and heaths to the haunting, pitted landscape known as Grimes Graves – an area of flint mines dating to Neolithic times. The on-site museum reveals the secrets of this other-worldly area which still bears the scars of glaciers. Learn about its history, geology and its settlers, then don a hard hat and descend by ladder into the depths of an original Neolithic flint mine yourself. The grey, glassy rock dug out from across this vast site, was a valuable commodity. It was ‘knapped’ to create sharp tools – a highly skilled job – and millions of years later, flint was mined, knapped locally and exported to supply the gun trade.

Return via the forest fire tracks to Oxborough to lock your hire bikes away in the accommodation’s bike store, before heading homeward.

Mileage: Min 28 Max 31