Here are the available cottages for rental in Norfolk.

Review by Alison from Leeds

The Norfold Broads, especially if you hire a boat was very peaceful, beautiful and relaxing. I woud say it was one of the best places we had visited as it was like another world whilst being on one of the boats, well worth the money really, watching the ducks and smiles on other peoples facest and the waving as they went by on the boats. My little boys hand was nearly waved off. Lovely place and we will be going back.

Magic of the East

From the Mail on Sunday

It was our first night in Norfolk. We were on our way to the pub on the village green, driving along winding lanes, shafts of soft pink evening sunlight flooding the stillness of pea-green meadows, when we saw the barn owl perched imperiously on a wooden post.
The big, flat, dinner-plate face turned slowly to inspect us with unafraid eyes that seemed to say: 'You're not hurrying me.' The bird preened its chocolate and vanilla breast feathers a little and, with no small measure of disdain at this disturbance, took off to hunt in the woods and river banks for its evening meal of vole.
Later, as we ate Lowestoft crab and sipped Chardonnay in the Brisley Bell, we saw Olly Beak diving and swooping over the darkening cricket ground, putting on a flashy sunset cabaret of irresistible aeronautics.
He wasn't showboating. This was a food hunt, deadly and serious. What a privilege though, indeed thrilling, to see such a beautiful, dignified creature working at the game of survival in the wild less than three hours after we had left the traffic and madness of Central London. It was also an extraordinary opening act to a magical three-day break in a forgotten part of an empty county that has, in places, a strange timeless quality.
I had been to Gateley near Fakenham once before. It was a shot in the dark. We had wanted to stay in a farmhouse and had been told by a friend in nearby Walsingham of one that was buried deep in a sylvan setting with its own deer herd, showground rams and a garden straight out of a Helen Allingham watercolour.
On arrival it turned out to be a classic Georgian, unpretentious but stylish 18th-century gem, all mellow brick, perfect proportions, with climbing sweet peas rambling around the blue open door, a sunroom and a big tabby cat asleep on the best cane chair. What bliss! At night the perfume of the roses is so strong you could bottle it. The only sound in the night air is the odd hoot from our newfound friend.
From Centre Farm it is a 25-minute drive through picture-postcard backwaters fording small rivers, their banks swathed in summer reeds, to the coastal villages of Cley, Wells, Burnham Overy Staithe and Blakeney, where Nelson first stepped into a dinghy and learnt to sail in the creeks and marshes which lead eventually to the cold waters of the North Sea.
The beaches such as Holkham, miles of wide open sand with the sea usually miles away (it was here where Gwyneth Paltrow walked barefoot in Shakespeare In Love), are bracing and perfect for childhood pursuits like crabbing and shell collecting.
In Blakeney, Beans Boats take parties of 25 by chugging wooden luggers out to the sandbanks, where on a good day you will see 40 or 50 common and grey seals, some young pups, some looking like old walruses.
They lie contentedly on the sand, curiously eyeing these boats of humans bobbing about just a few feet away from them, and the more adventurous will dive into the sea to inspect you, their shiny moustached heads set with deep, imploring eyes, surfacing just a few feet away from the outstretched hands of children. ... more

Hollywood stars beat a path to north Norfolk

From the Mail on Sunday

With a bemused grin, the Viscount Coke says: 'I have to admit I didn't really know who Gwyneth Paltrow was. I didn't pay that much attention when they came to film.'
Tom Coke (pronounced 'Cook' - you are informed very quickly!), the son of the Seventh Earl of Leicester and heir to the Holkham Estate, is striding across the huge, fantastic sweep of Holkham Beach; seven miles long and up to a mile wide when the tide is out at its furthest.
The air is full of the sound of calling oystercatchers and the roar of North Sea waves pounding the sand. His springer spaniels Snail and Slug and Irish terrier Hector race ahead across the sand, intoxicated by the vast open space.
We were on the very spot where Gwyneth Paltrow is pictured in that memorable scene at the end of the film Shakespeare In Love.
In the story she is supposed to be across the Atlantic in Virginia. Cinema-goers saw the wonderful swathe of sand fringed by pine trees and assumed that this gorgeous beach must have been in some exotic foreign spot.
Not, of course, the audience at the Regal cinema, Cromer, where Tom Coke finally caught up with the cinematic career of Ms Paltrow: 'When that final scene came on a huge buzz went around the audience and we all said, "Oh gosh, that's Holkham Beach! '
However, the residents of this extremely delightful corner of Norfolk could be forgiven for being a little blase about the movie business.
Not far from Holkham Beach in Wells, Stanley Kubrick shot scenes for Full Metal Jacket when Norfolk was used as a stand-in for the paddy fields of Da Nang.
'It did look very like Vietnam,' admits Tom Coke.
And when All Saints were shooting the video for the song used in the film The Beach, Holkham Beach was used to look like Thailand. And somebody at the Victoria Hotel bumped into S Club 7 filming their video a couple of weeks ago.
'There's also a production company talking about another major film here later in the year,' says Viscount Coke. ... more

Still Dad's Army country

Any Dad's Army fan knows that this classic of all British sitcoms was set on the South Coast of England.
But try to find the fictional Walmington-on-Sea there and you'll be almost as hapless as Captain Mainwaring and his men.
In fact, the cult comedy was filmed in and around Thetford in Norfolk and the broadcast by the BBC of two 'lost' episodes is generating an interest in visiting those locations.
The perfect starting point for a Dad's Army recce is the Anchor Hotel in Thetford. The cast used to stay here and at the Bell Hotel, across the river, during filming, and the first scene of the first episode was filmed, in 1968, in what was the Anchor's Norvic Room, but which is now the High Seas Restaurant.
The rare seafront scenes were shot in Lowestoft, in Suffolk, and Winterton, but Thetford was used repeatedly in the 80 episodes of Dad's Army.
It's a compact town, bisected by two rivers, the Little Ouse and the Thet, with narrow streets of flint-fronted houses.
I took a walk down Bridge Street to Newtown, where in one episode the orange-brick pre-War council houses formed the backdrop to a scene in which the platoon practised subterfuge cunningly disguised as dustbins, and down Bury Road to the derelict church of St Mary the Less.
It was in this churchyard that Corporal Jones undertook an obstacle course designed to prove he was fit enough to remain in the platoon.
Over the river is Nether Row, where he showed off his butcher's van, newly converted as troop transport.
Nether Row's terrace of flat-fronted cottages - renamed Percy Street on TV - were used countless times as a backdrop.
When a German paratrooper's parachute got caught on the town hall clock, the warden stood down here and had bottles chucked at him by Pike. ... more

Inns with staying power

From the Mail on Sunday

What makes a successful hotel? Conrad Hilton, founder of the Hilton chain, claimed three reasons: location, location and location. But the success story of a great hotel has a more complex and indefinable plot.
Staff are important: a good hotel can be ruined by poor service and cameo roles played by reception, bedroom and dining room staff can make or break your visit. Once a waiter at Hambleton Hall, Rutland, drove home to get his dinner jacket for my husband who had packed the wrong one. That episode endeared the place to us for life.
You're also looking for comfort, good food and a great atmosphere. Guests are more discerning than ever, but the danger is that many hotels fall into the trap of formulaic anonymity, however luxurious they may be.
What price gyms, spas, conference facilities, DVDs and modems in your room if all these places seem exactly the same? Herein lies the difference between a hotel that is merely good and one that's outstanding.
At the ones I like most it's invariably the stamp of a distinctive owner or manager that makes them special.
Not necessarily because they're particularly splendid or expensive (though some are) but because they are driven by the vision of a shrewd individual with an unusual imagination.
Of the hundreds of hotels I've stayed in three of my favourites in this country fall into this category.
THE INN AT WHITEWELL Forest of Bowland, near Clitheroe, Lancashire BB7 3AT Tel: 01200 448222
We took less than five minutes to book a stay at The Inn At Whitewell, when we stumbled upon it by chance and dropped in for a quick lunchtime snack.
After walking in the windswept countryside of the Forest of Bowland, nothing could have seemed more welcoming than the blazing fire in a comfortably furnished sitting room, gumboots drying around it and a black labrador toasting itself, groaning with pleasure.
But it was meeting owner Richard Bowman that clinched it. A tweedy country landowner type, his deceptively vague manner and the dry humour of his conversation convinced us we'd stumbled on a winner. When we returned for a three-day stay we weren't disappointed. Richard's character is in the best tradition of understated English eccentricity.
His father took on the hotel when he used to shoot in the area and wet his whistle in the bar. Richard took over 25 years ago and, not without difficulty, set about restoring the place.
The kitchen had to be redone after it fell off the side of the building into the River Hodder which runs alongside. Then he did the gents' loos after they crashed into the cellars.
He has superb taste and many of the 17 bedrooms with antique furnishings and peat fires overlook the river, the only concession to modern life are the state-of-the-art music systems in each.
Richard's obsession is antique plumbing and the bathrooms boast canopied baths with water jets and old French shower units with heads the size of dinner plates. You can sit on a thunderbox lavatory and watch the light play over the wild landscape.
The older and more distressed things look the better for Richard. 'I'm against snobbery and pomposity,' he says. Yet guests' comfort is paramount and while he describes his success as accidental, hotels do not enjoy an occupancy rate of more than 90 per cent and a string of awards by mistake. ... more