A huge sweep of sand, pinewood and grazing marsh on the north Norfolk coast, backed by Holkham Hall and loud with geese in winter
Holkham is one of the largest national nature reserves in England, a long run of the north Norfolk Coast west of Wells-next-the-Sea. A national nature reserve, or NNR, is a place set aside for its wildlife and scenery. Behind a wide, firm sand beach stand belts of pine, planted long ago to hold the dunes, and behind those lie grazing marshes under some of the biggest skies in the country. In winter the marshes fill with pink-footed geese and wigeon in their thousands, one of the great wildlife spectacles of the English coast. The reserve backs onto the Holkham Hall estate, the grand Palladian house of the Coke family, Earls of Leicester, whose parkland runs down towards the sea. The Peddars Way and Norfolk Coast Path follows the edge of it, and the beach is broad enough that it never feels crowded, even on a hot day.
