THE long, slow curve of Norfolk’s coastline fades almost imperceptibly into the North Sea. It’s a mysterious, intoxicating landscape where low chalk downs, peppered with woods, fields and flint villages, merge into vast stretches of beach and marsh.
The sea, luminous under huge skies in the distant haze, works quietly on the shore. The soundscape is not the crashing breakers and hectic gulls of the ozone coast of the West Country, but the bubbling cry of the curlew, high-piping oystercatchers and, if you are lucky, perhaps the low, distant boom of a bittern.
This is one corner of the country where the Royal Family can keep a low profile
Of course, there are storms, swells and tidal surges and, when an easterly wind blows up, it can be as bracing as Skegness. Yet this only adds to the sense of remoteness, of being on the edge of things, of escape from the everyday. Not surprising, then, that Norfolk has held such an enduring appeal for the Royal Family. Members have been coming here to relax
