Cottages in Hunstanton

Table of Contents

• At a glance: What should you know about renting a cottage in Hunstanton?
• Cottages in Hunstanton: find your perfect retreat
• Exploring Hunstanton: our top recommendations
• Activities: What are the top things to do and see in Hunstanton?

• Traditional coastal cottages: Flint-and-brick holiday cottages sit close to the promenade and along the lanes of Old Hunstanton, most with parking, a garden and a well-equipped kitchen.
• Where to base yourself: The town centre suits families, while Old Hunstanton, Heacham and Brancaster offer quieter lanes, dunes and easy access to the Norfolk Coast Path.
• Highly rated by guests: Recent stays score well above 9 out of 10, with reviewers praising sea views, dog-friendly gardens and short walks to the beach.
• Sunsets over the sea: Hunstanton faces west across the Wash, so it is the one east-coast resort where you watch the sun set over water.
• Things to fill the days: Striped cliffs, the Sea Life centre, Sandringham, Norfolk Lavender and long walks between the salt marshes and the dunes.

Cottages in Hunstanton range from compact two-person boltholes tucked behind the high street to roomy flint-fronted houses that sleep eight or more. Many are converted stables, coach houses and fishermen's homes, kept characterful with beams and open fires but fitted out for modern self-catering. If a cottage is not quite right, holiday homes in Hunstanton, log cabins and lodges and glamping stays sit nearby along the same stretch of coast.

Most cottages here come with the practical extras that make a coastal week easy:

• Private parking, invaluable in August when the seafront fills up
• Enclosed gardens and courtyards, often dog-friendly
• Full kitchens for cooking the day's catch from the local fishmonger
• Sea views over the Wash from upstairs bedrooms
• Wi-Fi, TV and a wood burner for cooler autumn evenings

Book early for school holidays, when the best-placed cottages go quickly.

What are the best areas to stay in Hunstanton?

Old Hunstanton is the pick for a quiet cottage within a few minutes of the dunes, while the town centre keeps the promenade and shops on your doorstep; further along the wider Norfolk Coast the villages get smaller and slower. The table below details regions for specific interests:

What do our guests say?

Guests staying in Hunstanton cottages consistently rate them highly, with several properties sitting at 9.7+ and above over the past year. The comments repeat the same themes: how short the walk to the sand really is, how welcome dogs are made, and how useful a garden and a parking space turn out to be on a busy summer weekend. Sea views over the Wash come up again and again.

Here are our top-rated cottages from the past year:

1. Bobby Buoy - Uk41453 - 10.0+: A four-person cottage in Hunstanton with a private yard and parking, praised for its easy walk into town.
2. Spacious 3 bed holiday cottage in Hunstanton only 150 metres to the beach. - 9.7+: Sleeps six in Hunstanton, with a garden and Wi-Fi, and the sand barely two minutes away.
3. Chestney House - 9.7+: A sea-view cottage for eight in Hunstanton that welcomes pets and comes with off-street parking.

Hunstanton sits on the north-west corner of Norfolk, facing west across the Wash, with its famous striped red-and-white chalk cliffs at the northern end.

🥗Where to eat in Hunstanton?

According to Google Maps data and reviews, Old Town Beach Cafe is the best rated restaurant in Hunstanton. Below is a table showing the top 5 highly-rated restaurants hand-picked by our travel experts.

⭐Our guests' recommendation: Our guest traveller Charlotte recommends the The Coffee Pot in Hunstanton: a small, long-running cafe on Le Strange Terrace where breakfast is unhurried and the window tables look straight out over the Wash.

1. Walk beneath the striped cliffs
2. Meet the seals at Sea Life
3. Wander the royal Sandringham Estate
4. Follow the Norfolk Coast Path
5. Watch the sunset from the promenade
6. Breathe in Norfolk Lavender
7. Hunt for fossils and shipwrecks

1. Walk beneath the striped cliffs

   Hunstanton's cliffs are unlike anything else on the English coast: bands of red chalk, white chalk and honey-coloured carrstone stacked in clean stripes above the beach. At low tide you can walk the whole way along their base from the town beach up to Old Hunstanton, past rock pools and fallen boulders. Fulmars nest on the ledges through spring and summer, so bring binoculars. Check the tide tables before you set off, as the water comes back in against the cliff foot faster than you would expect.

2. Meet the seals at Sea Life

   The Sea Life centre on Southern Promenade doubles as a working seal hospital, taking in pups from the colonies out on the sandbanks of the Wash and returning them to the wild. Alongside the rescue pools there are otters, penguins and an ocean tunnel where rays glide overhead. Feeding talks run through the day and are genuinely worth timing your visit around. It is the safest bet in town on a wet afternoon, and children tend to leave knowing rather more about Norfolk's coastline than when they arrived.

3. Wander the royal Sandringham Estate

   Twenty minutes inland, Sandringham is the royal family's Norfolk home and opens its house, gardens and 600 acres of country park to visitors. The parkland is free to walk and laced with waymarked trails through oak and Scots pine, while the walled gardens and the church of St Mary Magdalene reward a slower look. There is a good restaurant using estate produce and a plant centre worth a browse. Come in late spring when the rhododendrons along the drive are at their best.

4. Follow the Norfolk Coast Path

   Hunstanton is the western starting point of the Norfolk Coast Path, which runs east through Brancaster, Burnham Deepdale and Wells before finishing at Hopton. You do not have to walk the lot: the stretch to Thornham takes in dunes, shingle and the golf links, and coastal buses run back along the A149 so you can go one way and ride home. Bring boots for the marsh sections. Cottages further along at Wells-next-the-Sea make a good second base if you fancy tackling more of it.

5. Watch the sunset from the promenade

   Because Hunstanton faces west across the Wash, it gets something no other east-coast resort can offer: the sun going down over open water. The green above the cliffs and the benches along the promenade are the classic spots, and on clear evenings you can pick out the Lincolnshire shore and the wind farms on the horizon. Bring a takeaway coffee, or fish and chips eaten on the wall. In midsummer the light lingers well past nine o'clock.

6. Breathe in Norfolk Lavender

   Six minutes south at Caley Mill, Norfolk Lavender has been distilling on the same site since the 1930s and holds the national collection of lavender varieties. From late June to early August the fields turn purple and the distillery runs tours explaining how the oil is drawn off. There is a tea room, a large plant centre and a small animal garden for younger visitors. Even out of flowering season the shop and the mill buildings make a pleasant hour on the way to or from the coast.

7. Hunt for fossils and shipwrecks

   The shore below the cliffs is one of Norfolk's better fossil grounds, with ammonites, belemnites and sea urchins turning up in the fallen chalk after winter storms. Further north on Old Hunstanton beach the ribs of the steam trawler Sheraton, wrecked in 1947, emerge at low water and make a striking photograph against the sunset. Take a bag, stick to loose material rather than hammering the cliff face, and keep an eye on the incoming tide throughout.