The sea wall out of Burnham Overy Staithe is deliberately dull, and that turns out to be the point. You are up on a grassy embankment two or three metres above the marsh, dead straight, a creek on one side and grazing on the other. Boats behind you at the staithe, the windmill inland, a low horizon and a great deal of sky. Curlew and redshank making noise. Nothing happens for a mile and a quarter.
Then the bank runs out, you climb into loose sand and marram, you lose the view completely for a minute or two, and at the top of Gun Hill it opens.
Holkham Bay from up there is enormous. A flat pale sheet of sand running east for miles, and at low tide the sea is a thin silver line a very long way out, with shallow pools between you and it holding the sky. Scolt Head Island sits off to the left across the harbour mouth. Away east you can pick out the dark green line of the pine belt where it begins, and that is your direction of travel for the next hour.
There was almost nobody there. We did this at the end of July, in the middle of the school holidays, on the most visited coast in Norfolk, and Gun Hill was empty. It is far enough from every car park that the crowds simply do not reach it.
The idea: let the bus do the outward leg
Most walking on this coast is written up one of two ways. Either a circular route that returns you to your car, or a stage of the Norfolk Coast Path for people walking the whole thing over a week. This weekend is neither.
Both days work the same way. Park once, catch a bus out along the coast, then walk back to where the car already is. No shuttling, no second vehicle, no retracing your steps, and no walking the same mile twice. You finish each day at the pub rather than at a layby three miles from it.
It is a small idea and it changes the whole shape of a walking weekend. It also means the mileage is all forward progress, which matters when a good part of Saturday is soft sand.
We based ourselves at the Globe on the Buttlands in Wells, and that choice is practical rather than sentimental: it is two minutes from the stop where Saturday’s bus leaves, and Saturday’s walk finishes on foot outside its front door. There is more on it, and on the two alternatives in town, further down.
One thing to say plainly, because the rest of this guide gets specific about it. We did this weekend with a dog, and the coast rewards having one. But the walking, the buses and the pubs all work exactly as well without a furry companion.
Two buses do the work. Sanders run the Coasthopper, and the CH1 covers Wells to Cromer via Stiffkey, Morston and Blakeney, roughly hourly. Lynx run the Coastliner 36 west from Wells, calling at Holkham and Burnham Overy Staithe. An Explorer Ticket covers both networks for the day, which is worth knowing when you are using two different operators across a weekend. Dogs travel free on the Coasthopper, provided they are on the floor rather than the seats.
Check the first bus of the day the night before. On a Sunday in particular, the timetable is thinner than you would like.
What people underestimate: there is no shade
This is the honest warning about both walks and it is the one nobody puts in the route notes.
There is no cover anywhere. Not on the sea wall, not on the dunes, not on the open sand, and not on the Stiffkey marsh. The Holkham pines are the only shade on either day, and they come at the halfway point of Saturday and nowhere at all on Sunday. In late July that is the thing that shapes the day. We were walking in 20 to 25 degrees with the sun straight overhead on open sand for hours, and by the pines we were very glad of them.
So dress for it properly. Hat, sun cream, more water than you think, and reapply. In winter the same exposure works against you in the opposite direction, because a north easterly wind comes straight down that sea wall and there is nowhere to hide from it, so layer up instead. Either way, this is not a coast that lets you shelter from the weather it happens to be having, but this is certainly part of its charm.
The other thing people get wrong is pace. The sea wall is the least interesting mile of the day and it is completely exposed, so it is tempting to push. Do not. There are three more miles of soft going after it, and arriving at Gun Hill already tired is a bad trade for the fifteen minutes you saved.
Saturday: Burnham Overy Staithe to Wells
Leave the car at the Globe. Walk up to the Buttlands and pick up the Coastliner 36 heading west. It is about fifteen minutes to Burnham Overy Staithe and £2.60 for an adult single, or covered by the Explorer if you are buying one for the weekend.
From the staithe, head north along the sea wall out over the marsh. It is about a mile and a quarter to the foot of the dunes, which is 25 to 30 minutes at an honest pace and nearer 35 if you have a dog who likes to take a look around. If you do, keep the lead on for this section: there is grazing on the marsh, ground-nesting birds on both sides, and the bank is raised, so a dog that goes over the edge after a bird lands in deep creek mud.
Then the dunes. Allow another five or ten minutes for the crossing itself, because soft sand slows you more than you expect and it is a short pull that is harder than it looks after a flat mile.
A word on the name. Gun Hill sounds like it should come with a story, and it half does. The Norfolk county record lists it as a large, now eroded dune that may have been a defensive installation during the Napoleonic Wars, but it is careful to say “possibly”, and nothing of it survives. What is actually documented is later: the site was reused by the military in the Second World War, traces of the huts can still be found, and a brick chimney stack of apparently nineteenth century date is still standing in the dunes, around four metres high and slowly eroding. See if you can spot it.
From Gun Hill, keep going east along the sand. Holkham Gap is roughly halfway and it is where the crowds start, because it has a car park attached. Gun Hill is the better moment of the two by a distance.
Lead on through the pines and the boardwalks, and mind the marked on-lead zones between April and August, which were live when we walked it. Off the lead again on the open sand.
For lunch you have a choice. The Victoria at the top of Lady Anne’s Drive if you want a proper sit down, or the beach cafe by the car park if you would rather keep moving. We kept moving, largely because breakfast at the Globe had been substantial enough to make lunch a formality.
Then east again, past the Wells beach huts. If you have a dog, stay west of the eastern beach entrance, because dogs are not allowed on the first 200 yards there.
Pick up the sea wall and walk in along the harbour into the quay. About 7 to 8 miles all in, and you finish at the pub with the car already outside it.
If the weather is against you, park at Lady Anne’s Drive instead and do the Holkham to Wells loop back through the pines. About 6 miles, and the pines take the worst of the wind or the sun off you.
Sunday: Stiffkey to Blakeney
Pack the car and drive to Blakeney, about 25 minutes, then park on the quay. Take the Coasthopper CH1 west to Stiffkey, roughly hourly, and worth checking before you set off.
Walk back east on the Norfolk Coast Path through the saltmarsh. There is grazing at the Stiffkey end, so any dog goes back on the lead until you are past the sheep.
This is a completely different day to Saturday and that contrast is the reason to do both. Saturday is scale: dunes, open sand, the sea a rumour on the horizon. Sunday is detail. Creeks, channels, sea lavender flowering purple across the marsh in late summer, wading birds working the mud, and a horizon that goes on for ever in every direction. It is quieter, closer, and slower.
Morston Quay is the halfway point and has toilets, a coffee hut and somewhere to sit. About 5 miles in total back to Blakeney.
A tide note that matters more here than on Saturday. A big spring tide fills these creeks quickly and the marsh floods from the channels rather than from the seaward side, so the water can arrive behind you. Keep dogs off the marsh itself if the tide is coming in.
If it is wet and windy, swap the whole day for Sheringham to Cromer along the clifftop. About four and a half miles, no tide to think about, and the train back.
Dogs on this coast, zone by zone
Skip this bit if you are walking without one. If you are not, it is the part worth reading twice, because the rules here are specific rather than general and getting them wrong means a wasted drive.
Blakeney Point is mostly closed to dogs. Nothing at all between 1 April and 31 August, to protect ground-nesting birds, and from 2026 nothing between 1 November and mid January either, because the grey seal colony has spread further along the spit. That is the shingle running west from the Cley beach car park. Go east from Cley towards Salthouse instead, which is open all year, lead on during nesting and pupping. The Sunday walk above avoids the Point entirely, which is deliberate.
Holkham and Wells are zoned rather than banned. Lead on through the pinewoods and boardwalks, and in the marked on-lead patches from April to August. Off the lead on the open sand the rest of the time. At Wells, the first 200 yards from the eastern entrance is a no-dog stretch, so head west past the huts.
Water is the thing people forget, and in summer it is the serious one. These beaches are enormous and there is no fresh water anywhere on them. A dog chasing a ball across two miles of Holkham sand in July will drink seawater if you let it, and then you have a different sort of afternoon. Take a bottle and a collapsible bowl and offer it more often than seems necessary. Ours is an anti-spill one that clips onto a rucksack strap, which matters more than it sounds when it is riding on the outside of a bag all day.
Take a towel for the dog as well, and something to protect the car. Saltmarsh mud is deep, black, and it doesn’t smell great. An old blanket does the job, though Chewy, the whippet we had with us, belongs to my mum, who has used a waterproof seat cover for years, and it came along that weekend.
Where to stay
Wells is the right base for this. It sits between the two walks, it has the buses, and it means Saturday finishes on foot at your own front door.
The Globe Inn, The Buttlands. Nineteen rooms in the pub itself, plus ten more and a self-contained cottage at Arch House Rooms, five or six minutes away with its own terrace and, crucially, its own car park. Arch House guests still eat breakfast at the Globe.
Be clear about the parking, because it is the one thing worth understanding before you book. The Globe itself does not have a car park. It sits on the Buttlands green, where the street parking round the green is free, with ticketed spaces nearby. The private car park belongs to Arch House. In a town where the public car parks run about £7 for four hours, that is a real consideration, and if parking matters to you, book the Arch House side.
It is properly set up for dogs rather than tolerantly so. Dogs are £25 extra and you should say when you book. For this, you get a bed, towel and water bowl in the room and a dog menu in the bar. The rooms are clean and comfortable rather than luxurious, with a coffee machine and hot drink station in each, and Connock England toiletries in a scent made for them called Verdant, which tells you the register they are going for. Rates swing a long way depending on which room you take, roughly £150 a night at the lower end and up to £300 for the better ones, so it is worth looking at what you actually get for the jump.
Two practical things. Some rooms look over the bar courtyard and some have only one small window, so if either matters, ring and ask rather than taking pot luck online. We were not in a courtyard room so I cannot tell you how it sounds from inside one, but the bar was busy on our Saturday and the courtyard sits directly below those rooms, so if you sleep lightly it is worth asking to be put on the other side.
And book a table when you book the room. The kitchen does all day dining from midday to 9pm so you are not tied to a sitting, but it fills up, and booking removes the problem in thirty seconds.
Check availability at The Globe Inn
Bang in Wells. A bistro and cafe with a handful of B&B rooms above, right in the middle of town, with a courtyard out the back. Smaller and less hotel-ish than the Globe, more rooms-above-a-good-cafe, and the breakfast has a reputation that the reviews back up. Dogs are welcome and the staff downstairs are used to them. No car park of its own, so you are on the street or in the town car park, which is fine for a weekend, although still a mild inconvenience.
Check availability at Bang in Wells
The Crown Hotel, The Buttlands. An old coaching inn on the green, twelve rooms, recently done up, free private parking, and a notch smarter than the other two. If it is just you, book it online like anywhere else.
If you are bringing a dog, ring instead. Dogs are allowed in some rooms only and on request rather than across the board, so an online booking will not necessarily capture it, and it is worth having the confirmation in writing before you travel.
Check availability at The Crown
The short version: the Crown if you want the nicer room and the quieter evening, the Globe if you want the pub buzz. If you are bringing a dog, the Globe is the one that makes it no trouble at all.
Where to eat
The Globe, both evenings. Pub food with a coastal lean, done properly rather than ambitiously. Local seafood, fish and chips, the classics. The beer battered haddock was excellent and about as fresh as you would hope this close to the harbour, and the smoked mackerel salad the following night was just as good. Prices are north Norfolk coast prices: £21 for the fish and chips, £23 for the salad. Slightly expensive, but worth it.
It was very busy on the Saturday and the service slowed a little with it, though never enough to be a problem. Book a table when you book the room and the question does not arise.
Breakfast is included and it is a proper cooked one, good enough that it set us up for a day of walking and turned lunch into an optional extra.
Sunday lunch at the White Horse, Blakeney. The roast is the thing this pub is known for and it earns the reputation. Proper plates, beef cooked how you ask, big Yorkshires, everything on it cooked exactly right. It is the more restaurant-y of the two obvious options in Blakeney and Sunday is when that pays off. The current menu runs traditional beef, slow cooked pork, or a chestnut and mushroom roast. We paid £24.50 for the beef and £23.50 for the pork.
It is also seriously dog friendly, and by that I mean throughout rather than one corner by the door. There is a garden terrace round the back, tucked away from the quay, if the weather suits and your dog is the sort that enjoys sitting outside. Chewy is a whippet who would rather be curled up somewhere warm, so he was very firmly indoors regardless of the temperature.
One correction to the pub’s own advice. Their site says booking is not essential and they will find you a spot. It was very busy when we went. Book it.
The Kings Arms is the other Blakeney option and a more straightforwardly pubby one.
Two different White Horses, and this catches people out. The White Horse at Blakeney, above, is not the White Horse at Brancaster Staithe, which is twenty miles west along the same coast and is a mostly-seafood restaurant with marsh views. Both are good, both are dog friendly, both come up when you search. We have written about the Brancaster Staithe one in our Brancaster and Sandringham weekend. Make sure you are booking the one you meant.
A perfect weekend, in order
Friday evening. Arrive in Wells, park at the Globe or at Arch House, dinner in the bar. Check the first Coastliner 36 of the morning and look up the tide times before you go to bed. A falling or low tide on Saturday is what you want.
Saturday morning. Bus from the Buttlands to Burnham Overy Staithe. Sea wall, dunes, Gun Hill. Do not rush the first mile.
Saturday lunch. The Victoria at Lady Anne’s Drive for a sit down, or the beach cafe if you would rather keep going.
Saturday afternoon. East along the sand past the beach huts, then the sea wall into Wells. Seven to eight miles done, and the car is where you left it.
Saturday evening. Dinner at the Globe. Book it in advance.
Sunday morning. Pack, drive to Blakeney, park on the quay, Coasthopper west to Stiffkey.
Sunday, late morning. Walk back east through the saltmarsh. Coffee at Morston Quay, which is the natural halfway stop.
Sunday lunch. The White Horse at Blakeney. Booked.
Sunday afternoon. Stop at Cley beach on the way out and walk east towards Salthouse. This is the workaround for the Blakeney Point closure and it is what we did: the shingle east of the car park is open to dogs all year, lead on through nesting and pupping season. Then home via Holt and Norwich.
Pro tips
Set Saturday by the tide, not the clock. Holkham Bay looks harmless because it is so flat, but on a rising tide the water comes in through the channels and can fill behind you rather than in front. A falling or low tide makes it a non-issue and also gives you the version of the bay worth walking, with the sea miles out and the pools mirroring the sky.
Buy the Explorer Ticket if you are using both buses. Two operators, two days, one ticket, and it saves the faff of working out fares at the door.
Budget north Norfolk prices. Food, drinks and parking all run higher here than you would expect elsewhere. It is not London, but it is closer to London than it is to the rest of Norfolk, and it adds up across a weekend.
If you are bringing a dog, book early. Dog rooms are limited along this coast and they go first, the Globe especially.
Winter is a genuine alternative, not a consolation. We have walked this coast in both seasons and there is a real argument for the cold one. The sands are properly empty, and tens of thousands of pink-footed geese roost on the Holkham freshmarsh through the winter, lifting off at dawn and dusk in numbers that are worth setting an alarm for. You lose the light and the warmth, and you lose Blakeney Point to the seasonal closure, but the plan above avoids the Point anyway.
Nearby, if you have longer
The Saturday walk crosses Holkham Bay, and Holkham itself deserves a day rather than a passing hour: our Holkham guide covers the hall, the beach and where to base yourself.
Twenty minutes west is the other half of this coast, the villages and the estate: Brancaster, Sandringham and the village everyone tells you to visit.
If you are coming through Norwich, it is worth a night at either end. We have written up the best pubs in Norwich and a weekend of Norwich and Great Yarmouth.
More across the county on our Norfolk hub.