Norfolk Coach Holidays and Escorted Tours
Norfolk rewards unhurried travel. It is a wide, flat, open county with an enormous sky over it, a coast that changes character every few miles, and a run of great houses and gardens that few English counties can match. The distances between them are short, which is exactly why it suits a coach holiday.
Our Norfolk tours are based in and around Norwich, so you unpack once and travel out each day: Sandringham and Holkham, East Ruston, the Sainsbury Centre, the Bure Valley Railway, a paddle boat on the Broads, and in December the Thursford Christmas Spectacular.
Frequently Asked Questions About Our Norfolk Tours
All of our Norfolk holidays are based in or just outside Norwich, so you settle into one hotel for the whole stay. Hotels used include the Holiday Inn on Ipswich Road, Sprowston Manor and Dunston Hall. The hotel for a particular departure is confirmed on that tour's own page, and if you would like to know more about the rooms, the lifts or the walk to dinner, do ask us before you book.
It helps. Several Norfolk itineraries include National Trust houses such as Felbrigg Hall and Blickling, and on those tours the price covers entry for members. If you are not a member, there will be an admission charge to pay on the day at those particular properties. The tour page sets out which entrances are included, and we are happy to talk it through before you decide.
Yes. Our Norfolk tours set aside a number of single rooms at no supplement — six on most departures — which go on a first-come basis, so it is worth ringing early if you want one. Beyond that a single supplement applies, and the amount varies by tour. Solo travellers are a normal part of these groups, and the shared coach and evening meal make it easy company.
Norwich as a touring base
Norwich makes a sensible centre for a Norfolk holiday. It was one of the largest cities in medieval England, and it still has the fabric to prove it: a Norman cathedral whose spire is the second tallest in the country, a castle keep on its mound above the rooftops, and more surviving medieval churches than any other city in northern Europe. Elm Hill's cobbles and timber fronts take about ten minutes to walk end to end.
The market, with its striped canvas stalls, has traded on the same square for the best part of nine centuries and is a good place to be left to your own devices for an hour. Out at the university, Norman Foster's Sainsbury Centre houses the Sainsbury collection, where Modigliani and Giacometti sit alongside art from Africa and the Pacific.
Because our tours stay put and travel out by coach each day, the driving is short and the evenings are your own.
Gardens, great estates and the Broads
Norfolk's gardens run from the grand to the eccentric, and several of them appear on our itineraries.
- East Ruston Old Vicarage — thirty-odd acres two miles from the sea, planted with tender exotics that ought not to survive there and mostly do.
- Sandringham — the royal estate near King's Lynn, with mature woodland garden, lake walks and the house itself.
- The Plantation Garden — a Victorian garden made in a disused chalk quarry in Norwich, complete with Gothic fountain.
- Holkham Hall — Palladian, built for the Coke family, dressed with real invention at Christmas.
- Houghton Hall — Sir Robert Walpole's house, with a walled garden and contemporary sculpture in the park.
- Felbrigg Hall — Jacobean outside, Georgian within, with a walled kitchen garden.
The Broads are a separate pleasure: roughly 125 miles of navigable rivers and lakes, best seen from the water, with the reedbeds and drainage mills at eye level.
