The largest of the Norfolk Broads, a wide shallow lake and wildlife reserve alive with marsh birds and swallowtail butterflies
Hickling Broad is the biggest of the Norfolk Broads — a broad being a shallow lake left when medieval peat diggings flooded, the pits people cut for fuel filling with water centuries ago. Wide and reedy, with open water rarely more than a metre or two deep, Hickling is a nature reserve run by the Norfolk Wildlife Trust and one of the best places in the country for marsh birds: marsh harriers quarter the reedbeds, bitterns boom in spring, and cranes have returned to the surrounding marshes. In early summer the reeds and dykes are a stronghold of the swallowtail, Britain’s largest butterfly, which breeds nowhere else but the Broads. Walking trails and boardwalks run out from the reserve, and boats drift through on the way between the River Thurne and the other broads. The Weavers’ Way long-distance path passes just to the south.
