Travel News Nov/Dec 2022


...SIX DAYS ON MULL & A NORTH NORFOLK MINIBREAK 23


THE TALE OF QUEEN MARY


BY NIGEL HEATH


It was the end of a two hundred and twenty-mile drive from our home, near Monmouth, and time to call a halt in the small market town of Holt. We did not know it then, but we were about to embark on something of a right- royal progress along the coast of North Norfolk.


My wife Jenny, who had done all the driving, was having withdrawal symptoms


around Felbigg Hall, which is packed with treasures, to come across a teapot that Queen Mary had actually given as a present to the last private owner’s mother Emily! The hall and its surrounding estate, finally bequeathed to the National Trust by Robert Wyndham Kettin-Cremer in 1969, has one of the finest walled gardens we have ever come across. The jewel in the crown is its large dovecot built in the 1700s to provide a constant supply of fresh meat for the founding Wyndham family.


for a Flat White coffee. Luckily, help was at hand at The Folly


Tea Room in one of the small hidden yards in this flintstone town of Georgian facades, said to be the prettiest in the county.


AND THE TEAPOT


Then a delightful hour was spent browsing around its narrow streets with their interesting collection of independent boutiques, cafes, art galleries and antique shops. We were staying for three nights at The Pheasant, in the nearby hamlet of Kelling, and set off early the following morning on a special mission.


Our taste buds were calling out for a picnic sample of the famous Cromer crab sandwiches, and purchase mission accomplished, we followed up with a stroll along this famous seaside town’s iconic Victorian pier. Turquoise coloured wave exploded into a dazzling white surf as they pounded the shingle strand on our later bracing walk along the beach at Cley next the Sea. But on the way back, the heavens opened and it was a rather soggy and bedraggled pair, who sat in the shelter of a beached fishing boat to munch their compensatory crab sandwiches.


One of the delights of this quite wild


and often windswept North Sea coast, is that it forms part of the eighty-four miles long Peddars Way, national trail, running through landscapes of outstanding natural beauty, and opened by Prince Charles in 1986.


Beginning to dry out, we drove back towards Cromer to visit the National Trust’s Jacobean Felbrigg Hall, built in the 1600s, and here my preconceived notions about Queen Mary were about to be challenged.


I have always taken a great interest in the lives of the Royal Family, from ‘the playboy prince’ Queen Victoria’s eldest son, who was later to become Edward V11, right through to the present day. Queen Mary, who wed Edward’s son George V was a keen collector of antiques. She would often go on a stately progress around the country estates of the great and the good and when she admired a particular object, her host felt obliged to make her a gift of it.


So great was my surprise on looking


a week they spend helping to keep the gardens


looking the best for all the


visitors. But what particularly impressed us was the display of exotic, drought tolerant, plants which seemed to be thriving in the micro climate created by the gardens high brick walls.


Staying with the royal theme, we left The Pheasant early the following morning for a drive to the Queen’s famous Sandringham estate, first opened to the public to celebrate her Silver Jubilee back in 1977. A tour of the house, which receives around one hundred thousand visitors between April and October, and is her majesty’s traditional Christmas retreat, gives one a fascinating glimpse into her close family life during the festive season.


Her stately home looks enormous from the outside, but is only two rooms wide, separated by a central hallway, and so is a surprisingly intimate space on the inside. We were greatly amused to find a


required by the Cholmondeley family at the time was effectively month- balled for a century


The garden, packed with a rich and colourful variety of flowering plants and shrubs, is constantly maintained by a team of three full-time gardeners and fifty volunteers. Here we met enthusiast helping hands Alice Evans and Carole Thomas, who very much enjoy the day


small table set for afternoon tea with Paddington Bear sat at one end and the queen’s handbag at the other! The mansion is set in sixty acres of magnificent parkland and is part of her twenty-one thousand acre Sandringham Estate. Just a short way back from whence we came an along the tree lined Kings Drive, we came upon neighbouring Houghton Hall and award-winning walled garden. This magnificent Palladian mansion is celebrating the three hundredth anniversary since it was built by Sir Robert Walpole, Britain’s first Prime Minister. Ironically, the family whose descendants are sill in residence today, offered the house to King Edward V11, but he decided to acquire Sandringham instead. The result was that the mansion not


and not


subject to alterations, and therefore remains very much as Sir Robert Walpole would have left it.


Like Felbrigg and nearby Sandringham, Houghton Hall contains many treasures, and Queen Mary’s love of antiques popped up in conversation with one of the guides as we were leaving. Yes, her majesty might have graciously accepted the gifts, but the fact that she may not really have coveted them, was emphasised by the fact that a Lady in Waiting would sometimes quietly return them, we were told.


Now it was time to return to The Pheasant our Georgian Country House Hotel, set in two acres of parkland, which made the ideal base for out Norfolk minibreak.


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