Welcome to Norfolk! Please arrive by 4pm, ready to check in to your gorgeous rooms at Cley Windmill.
After we settle into our rooms and freshen up, Julia will give a short briefing on the upcoming days and activities, which may change due to weather circumstances or if we are tempted by any new, exciting opportunities!
We will head out for an early evening exploration of the boats in Blakeney Quay, sketching boats at sunset and painting the gentle reflections on the water. After some time, we will stop for our first evening together, over a delicious dinner in Blakeney!
Afternoon
Wake up to our first full day on the sunny Norfolk Coast enjoying a big breakfast that will set us up for today’s activities.
We venture back to Blakeney for a full morning of sketching lots of playful seals! Blakeney National Trust Nature Reserve is the home of England’s largest grey seal colony, with more than 4000 little pups born each winter. It is also well known for its fantastic display of the summer breeding tern colony.
We may enjoy a ferry trip to see these amazing animals along the four-mile stretch of Blakeney Point, giving us a huge range of shapes, colours and patterns to sketch and paint throughout the morning.
After a restful stop for lunch, we will continue the day exploring the landscape, filling our sketchbooks with salt marshes and reeds which make perfect subjects for our watercolours.
We encounter derelict boats, endless streams of water and birds frolicking through the bushes, and there will be plenty of time to relax into your paintings. A good pair of walking shoes, binoculars and a camera are essential for a day like this!
Learning under Julia’s watercolour expertise will really come in handy here, making it the perfect medium to capture the smooth flow of the water, the gentle bend of the reeds and the powdery blue skies (hopefully!) above us.
With a selection of nearby pubs and restaurants in Blakeney, we will wind down for the evening over dinner before heading back to Cley for a full night’s rest.
Today’s adventure starts with a morning in Cley, a pretty village filled with birds, art, architecture, cafes and a place once used as an important trading port in the Middle Ages.
We will spend some time exploring the Cley Salt Marshes, the oldest and most well-known nature reserve owned by the National Trust. We can venture along one of the guided walks or take our time as a group, stopping whenever we like to sketch the intricate details of the marsh and the birds within it! We recommend bringing your binoculars for this one!
Today’s lunch stop will be in the café at the National Trust Centre where you can have a warming cup of tea and one of their delicious homemade cakes, all using locally sourced seasonal ingredients.
After lunch, whether that’s a picnic along the river or a visit to a local café, we will spend the afternoon in Glandford; once a key milling village on the River Glaven.
Here is another perfect opportunity for our paintings as we will take inspiration from their seventeenth century old Mill, the rolling green meadows of the Glaven Valley and the rustic, cobbled bricks of its scenic surrounding farmhouses, churches and estates.
Glandford is home to many galleries for us to wander through and soak up the amazing art around us, including ‘The BIRDscapes Gallery’, who exhibit two of our very own Art Safari tutors; Brin Edwards and John Threlfall!
Our day comes to an end with a group dinner at a nearby pub or hotel, before heading back to Cley Windmill and resting for the evening, whether that’s in the cosy, shared lounge area of the mill or the quiet comfort of your own room!
Today we will be sketching on the beach at Wells-next-the-Sea, with its colourful raised beach huts, huge skyscape, sweeping dunes and verdant backdrop of pinewoods, there will be plenty to tempt us! There is a beautiful walk from the carpark, through the pinewoods and onto the beach, however if you prefer, you can walk straight from the carpark along the coast, down to the beach huts. There is also a ‘Beach Bus’ (replacing the former toy train service) which can drop you close to the beach if you don’t fancy the walk!
We will spend some time here admiring and drawing the clouds above the sea and its vast surroundings, before heading back into Wells for lunch and the rest of the afternoon. Wells is a charming little town on the North Norfolk Coast, with a bustling quay filled with cafes, boutique shops, children crabbing and a fair few fish and chip shops! You may wish to spend some time wandering through the town, shopping for souvenirs or sketching the old quaint buildings, such as ‘The Granary’ which was once a hub for supplying malt to the Dutch, and the London breweries!
Our final evening together in Norfolk will be spent at the newly opened restaurant at Cley Windmill, where we’ll indulge in heavenly, classic dishes and reflect on the memorable days we’ve shared. This time will also provide an opportunity to revisit our sketchbooks and share the beautiful paintings we've created during our time in Norfolk.
Our time in Norfolk has come to an end as we bid farewell to Cley Windmill and its beautiful surroundings, before heading back home. If you are not ready to return home just yet, you may wish to spend the morning in Burnham Overy, one of North Norfolk’s most famous and well known areas. Described as a ‘pretty, unspoilt coastal village steeped in history,’ it’s just half an hour away by car, making it the perfect final muse for a coastal landscape.
Burnham Overy
