The sky is gently foreboding. I spot the sea on the horizon and feel – or maybe recall – a jolt of anticipation. Soon, my mother and I are sneaking through the entrance of Searles, a holiday park filled with static caravans and cabins, in Hunstanton. It has been 23 years since I last passed the resort’s seal statue, which has a cherry red beach ball balanced on its nose.
Between 1996 and 2001, my mother (Caroline), my grandmother (Marion), one of my childhood friends, and I, enjoyed an annual pilgrimage to this west Norfolk seaside town. This year, we finally went back. My craving to relive those days is common.
Hilton’s 2025 travel trends report suggests 45 per cent of Britons take their children to places they visited when they were young. Plus, according to research from Eurocamp, nine out of 10 people said childhood holidays are a source of their most cherished memories.
September was a relatively quiet time to visit, but Norfolk’s coast is perennially underapppreciated. The county gathers an annual average of three million overnight visits; for Cornwall the figure is 4.5 million, according to Visit Britain. Plus, while Norfolk isn’t cheap, there are pockets that are siginficantly more affordable for a holiday than England’s south-west coast. For example, short-term rental statistics provider KeyData found that, in August, short term lets in Great Yarmouth were an average of £58 less than those in Cornwall.
Tourists may be catching on, however – East Anglia was the only UK entry on Lonely Planet’s “Best in Travel” list of recommended destinations for 2025.
For our Norfolk trip, a family resort, with bingo nights and play areas, no longer held the same appeal. Instead, we based ourselves at Nest Farmhouse, near the village of Docking, a 15-minute drive from Hunstanton.
Set in 1,000 acres of farmland, it has five bedrooms, a decor of countryside tones flecked with vintage details – I was taken by a print depicting Cairo – and a wraparound balcony, from which to watch the sun rise over fields coated with lace-like mist.
Rather than our 90s caravan dinners of “picky bits”, we tried some of the area’s best restaurants. This included the offering at Nest Farmhouse; its co-founders are also behind highly regarded London spots Nest and Restaurant St Barts.
As we nibbled on tempura aubergine, a waitress told us that most staff were from the area.
After the appetiser, I tucked into hand-dived scallop, veggie butternut squash and “Grant’s garden plums”, a crumble concoction sourced, as you might guess, from the head chef’s backyard.
Following a family crisis last Christmas, I’ve spent months relying on my mother’s opaque steeliness. Time spent together, thinking about the resilient women who shaped our lives, was a chance to spoil her a little.
This year marks 20 years since Marion and my aunt, Lizzie, one of my mother’s sisters, died. Returning to a place that reminds us of both – my extended family all took trips to Hunstanton – felt like a fitting commemoration.
I knew my grandmother in her 70s and early 80s. She read tens of crime novels each month (brought, by my mother, in carrier-bags’ full from local libraries), baked lemon drizzle cakes and had patience for hours of playing shops. Her brain remained sharp, but arthritis left her increasingly housebound. Still, every year, she’d join us in Hunstanton.
When my mother was first coping with the financial strain of becoming a single parent, my grandmother would pay for us all. Mostly, she stayed in the caravan, glad to have a change of scenery. But she joined us on trips to Norfolk Lavender. This was the second stop for my mother and me.
The gardens, established in 1932, helped to revive a tradition of lavender growing in England that dated to the Romans. When we visited, the crop was past the season’s best. But, as we stepped into the gift shop, the scent pulled me back to pushing my grandmother’s wheelchair along gravel paths among the rows of purple, flowering ears.
I read that lavender oil was used in dressings for the injured in the First World War. My grandmother was born just five years after the end of that war and was a student at Cambridge during the second.
As we drove down narrow country lanes, we thought of Marion. I’d never known her to raise her voice, but, apparently, she was a formidable (and influential) presence as a secondary school English teacher. My mother also relayed a little more about the ring on my forefinger. It may have been, or was a precursor to, an engagement ring from an Italian American man she was dating in her 20s. She travelled with him to Utah in the 70s, but decided against a permanent move.
We sought comfort from vinegar-soaked chips back in Hunstanton. Then there was another dose of the past: memories of heatwave August weekends. One brought crowds, and a Radio 1 stage, to the green just in front of the fish shop. Another attracted benign swarms of ladybirds to the pebbledash walls along the promenade. This small section of the seaside is one of Norfolk’s less striking. Yet, replacing home with a home-from-home for a week was something I looked forward to year every year.
We walked through the fairground where a friend and I would ride on the bumpy slides and the ghost train. We bought 99 Flakes from a seafront kiosk and looked out at the flat, sandy beach where I’d hunted for shells.
The rich, salty hit of nostalgia started to clutch my stomach, so we veered away from our past haunts to watch windsurfers riding currents and small dogs rushing in and out of the water at Brancaster and to stroll along a wooded pathway to the all-but-deserted beach at Holme-next-the-Sea.
Even on a clear, 21°C afternoon, there were stretches of unclaimed sand where you could breathe in the briny air and, so long as you had a sturdy windbreaker, bask in the off-season rays.
The beach is a 10-minute drive from White Horse, a Grade II-listed pub where lunch options included Brancaster oyster, Cromer crab crumpets and Sandringham Farm mutton chops.
We also enjoyed a meal featuring locally sourced produce at Titchwell Manor, opposite an RSPB nature reserve.
As we drove home along a familiar, coniferous-tree-lined A-road, I felt that bitter-sweet ache. Childhood holiday memories aren’t just to be shared with newer generations.
Returning to the scene of mine helped to reassert my mother and I’s connection while introducing new additions to our well-thumbed Norfolk itinerary, including the dunes of Holme, a cockle stop at Brancaster Staithe’s marshy harbour and window shopping in Cotswolds-like Burnham Market.
Getting there
King’s Lynn railway station is served by Great Northern. From King’s Lynn, it is a 30-minute drive or taxi ride to Nest Farmhouse. The A149 is the main route into Hunstanton.Staying there
Nest Farmhouse has double or twin rooms from £200 per night, including breakfast. Accessible room available, nestfarmhouse.co.ukWhere to eat
Nest Farmhouse serves dinner from Weds–Sat and lunch Thurs–Sun.
Titchwell Manor serves dinner, light lunches and Sunday lunch, titchwellmanor.com
White Horse is open for lunch and dinner throughout the week, times vary. Bookings required for the restaurant, whitehorseholme.co.ukMore information
visitnorfolk.co.uk
