Please don’t forget your camera when you come to stay at Oaktree Cottage!
Some top sites for keen amateur photographers include the pebbled beaches, golden cornfields, and timeless brick & flint hamlets – often adorned with hollyhocks and roses through the summer and autumn.
Weybourne beach is a great coastal spot, as it has a great pebbled beach often with the clinker-built crab boats hauled up onto the bank – perfect for close-focus wide-angle shots. The cliffs are edged with thrift through the spring and early summer. Weybourne is also where the sandy cliffs to the east meet the salt marshes to the west, and so provides a variety of viewpoints and landscapes.
The view from the tower in Sheringham park in Upper Sheringham down towards the coast (taking in Weybourne windmill, the humps of bronze-age barrows, and patchwork fields) is also a classic east-coast scene, and can include a passing steam train if you get your timing right!
If wildlife photography is your passion, and you have a long lens, then the salt-marshes along the coast are one of the UK’s top spots for finding sea-birds. Even without a lens in the 400mm+ range, the huge aggregations of geese make for some spectacular shots, especially at take-off, or as they come in to land.
A seal-trip from Morston to Blakeney Point is another ‘must’. A top tip is to check the sailing schedule and to book onto a trip which allows you to spend some time ashore on Blakeney Point.
There are many picturesque spots along the river Glaven to stop and shoot at all times of the year – from lush pastoral scenes in the summer, to skeletal trees against the big skies in the winter.
When it comes to the towns and villages, then you will find some of the most picturesque traditional brick and flint hamlets between Holt and the coast. Holt itself is also very attractive, having been rebuilt after the ‘Great Fire’ in the 18th century, which gives a cohesive Georgian architecture to the whole town.
Photographic opportunities in Norwich include Elm Hill, Tombland, and the cathedral area, which are the best-preserved medieval parts. For graphic impact, the market area below the city hall (the largest permanent outdoor market in the UK) provides plenty of opportunity with the brightly-coloured canopies to the stalls creating a gaudy patch-work.
Keep a look-out for building facades while you wander around the city as well, Jarrolds for example has a fantastic tiled fresco above the shop windows.
On your way to or from Norwich, look out for road signs to Heydon (the sign for the Earle Arms pub is easiest to spot). Heydon really is on a road to nowhere – and has not been developed for centuries, and has consequently been preserved as a quintessential English village. You may recognise it from film and TV appearances as it is a popular film location (most famously perhaps in The Go-Between).
The dock area of Kings Lynn has a real old world feel to it as well. It was a thriving dock when the herring and mackerel fisheries were at their peak, and then neglected when the fisheries collapsed. This means that today it is an architectural time-capsule, and another popular film location.
These are just a few ideas as to spots that I have found to produce some great shots over the years. Keep your camera handy and I’m sure you’ll find plenty more!
See our gallery for more local images.
Dave has been a keen photographer for many years now and, combining his passion for diving and photography, is now an award-winning underwater photographer. Some of his artwork is on display in the cottage.