H is for Holkham Hall

Being a very decisive woman (!) I selected five Norfolk locations as "H'options" for Mr B to pick from for this weekend's activity. They were:

• "Behind Door 1, we have a 3000 acre country park with designated walks, resident herds of deer and a famous beach nearby.
• Behind Door 2 is a stately home - once that of our first Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole. The gardens are (apparently) famous and the park is home to over 1,000 head of white deer.
• Continuing the theme of large county houses, Door 3 is a hall with a beautifully landscaped fifteen acre garden. I know that will appeal...
• Behind Door 4 there is a 100 acre country park just a short walk from the historic Norfolk town of Holt.
• Finally we have Door 5 - behind which is the largest expanse of open water in the Broads system."

Who knew Norfolk had so many tempting attractions beginning with H and Hunstanton, Happisburgh Lighthouse, Horsey Wind Pump and the Holme Dunes didn't even make the short list!
Not very surprisingly, he chose Holkham Hall as our destination and, even though it was very overcast, we packed up the dogs, plenty of water and headed out. I am ashamed to say that I've never actually been to Holkham before even though it is one of the county's landmark buildings. Should also confess that we didn't take the opportunity to go into the house itself but then we did have the dogs with us...

It's free to enter and enjoy the grounds so we had a lovely walk around the 1 mile long lake followed by delicious ice-creams made on the estate. Well. We had ice-creams and the dogs had water! The plan was to then have a walk on the gorgeous Holkham Beach however one of our dogs is not well and she had clearly had enough of exercise for the day and as the sky had cleared it wasn't safe (or fair) to leave her in the car by herself whilst we took the other one for a romp.

I'd definitely like to return there but as it's a surprisingly long drive from Norwich perhaps we'll leave the dogs at home and stay overnight next time!