A visit to Holkham Beach Norfolk

Living where I do in South Lincolnshire, I am not too far from the many great photography locations, being two hours or so from The Peak District and three and a half hours from the Lake District. But even closer than that is the county of Norfolk with its large areas of woodland and the beautiful Norfolk Broads. But it also has a great coastline which I can get to in just over the hour to an hour and a half (depending on photo location), so its the quickest area to get to from home. Being on the east coast we don’t get the large rugged cliffs or sea stacks seen on other coasts around the world, but we do get large open beaches with areas of wetlands and salt marches that weave their way in to the North Sea. The beaches are at a shallow angle so the tides can vary the amount of beach visible by a huge degree, and the tide can come in very quickly indeed.

And so in mid May I thought I would head out to one of my favourite spots on this coast and visit Holkham Beach. As locations go it is very easy to get to, and which ever direction you come from you will be driving down narrow roads at some point, so don’t expect to race along to get there, as on this trip I encountered much wildlife on the road, including several Muntjac, Hares and pheasants, so be careful.

Below are a couple of maps to aid your directions to The Holkham Estate

Holkham Beach and the woods are all part of the Holkham Estate which also includes Holkham Hall and its grounds, which is a separate trip all on its own and well worth a visit.

Parking to get to the Beach is pretty strait forward as there is a big parking area leading to the beach from the main road, it can hold a lot of vehicles, but during the summer it can get full by 11am at times. If there is no parking here, the Estate also own the parking at Wells next the sea seafront, which has a lovely beach with traditional sea huts at the back of the beach, most of which are brightly painted and are a sight on their own. The only gripes I have about the car parks is their cost, but mostly (and this is only really relevant for photo purposes) the opening times, as they open at 6 in the morning and close at 9pm. This is more than adequate for families going to the beach but if you want to photograph a sunrise or sunset on this beach in the summer forget it, as the two car parks mentioned earlier are the only ones serving this beach and access by other roads etc is not possible.

So my day started with an alarm call just after 4am, yes I could have got up later but I always need some brekkie in me no matter what time I get up from slumber, with the aim to get to Holkham for when the car park opened at 6am. After a few delays and road diversions I got there at 6.15 with only one other car in the car park, the sun had been up for a while by this point but it was still a reasonably soft light with quite a bit of cloud.

The walk to the beach

Its only a short walk to the beach via a wooden walkway and it was so quiet, with only one other person there walking his dog.

Holkham Beach sits in a small inlet from the sea, so instead of just sand then the sea there are areas of sand dunes rolling across the inlet as well as little gulleys of water and marsh like areas, if the tide and light conditions are right some good compositions could be found, however today even at high tide the sea was well out, and so didn’t get to the interesting areas to photograph, so another day for those types of shot.

Looking West towards the pine trees, sky was dull at this point.

Some of the lovely sand dunes at Holkham beach, looking East towards Wells next the sea beach in the distance

As you can see the tide is still way out, and this is at 11am, if I remember right his was about 30 minutes after high tide. By this point i had been scouting for photos for about 5 hours and already eaten my dinner and there was getting a lot of people about the dunes and beach. So I decided to head home, but instead of walking back on the beach I decided to walk through the pine woods back to the car on the search for a photo in the woods.

Woodland photography is something I keep practising but it is extremely difficult to find a good photo/composition, but practice will eventually yield some results and I am pleased to say that today it did.

Pretty much as soon as I entered the woods the sun was intermittently coming out, and I noticed a small Beech tree in amongst all the Pine trees in the wood, so I found my composition and waited, and not too long as it happened. A shaft of sunlight lit up the grass to the base and just behind the Beech tree and I grabbed the following photo.

Light in the Dark, a new addition to my available prints and framed prints.

By the time I got back to the car it was midday, the car park was pretty much full and droves of people with their buckets and spades were heading to the beach, I didn’t manage to get any portfolio shots from the beach but I did get one from the woods, and I had a great time walking and taking in the beauty of Holkham.

The Holkham Estate website is https://www.holkham.co.uk