Cottages on the Norfolk Coast

• Cottages for every group: Flint and red-brick cottages sleeping four to six dominate, most with a kitchen, parking and a walled yard, and many with a sea view over the dunes.
• Where to base yourself: Wells-next-the-Sea and Blakeney suit slow, food-led weeks, while Cromer, Hunstanton and Holkham favour beaches, fossils and big estate walks.
• Guests rate them highly: Our top-rated coastal cottages score above 9.8+, with guests praising quiet lanes, well-equipped kitchens and short walks to the harbour or beach.
• Eating is the main event: Cromer crab, Brancaster mussels and samphire appear on nearly every menu, from harbourside crab shacks to village pubs cooking from nearby farms.
• Seven things worth planning around: The Blakeney seal trips, Holkham's pine-backed sands, the Bittern Line, fossil hunting at West Runton and the coast path.

Cottages here run from flint-walled fishermen's homes in Blakeney to red-brick terraces behind the sea wall, ideal for slow, home-cooked weeks rooted in local produce. Most sleep four to six, with a private yard, a real kitchen and off-street parking, so you can cook the day's catch rather than book a table. Look for the amenities that make a self-catering week here work:

• A well-equipped kitchen for cooking Cromer crab and Brancaster mussels
• An enclosed yard or garden, ideal on dog-friendly cottages
• Off-street parking, which is scarce in the harbour villages
• Sea or marsh views over the dunes and saltmarsh
• A boot room or drying space for muddy coast-path walks

Book early for August and half-term, when the harbour villages fill fastest.

What are the best areas to stay on the Norfolk Coast?

Wells-next-the-Sea is the best all-round base: a working harbour, a beach hut-lined beach and food shops within walking distance. The table below details regions for specific interests:

What do our guests say?

Guests staying in cottages along this coast consistently rate location and quiet above everything else. Reviews highlight short walks to the quay or beach, kitchens equipped well enough to cook a whole week of local seafood, and enclosed yards that suit dogs and small children. Ratings of 9.8+ are common, with the flint and red-brick cottages in Sheringham, Old Hunstanton and Cromer drawing particular praise for comfort and their sheltered outdoor space.

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

1. Cottage for 6 people, with yard, with pets - 9.9+: A pet-friendly cottage in Sheringham with a sea view and an enclosed yard, moments from the beach and the coast path.
2. Cottage for 4 people, with yard - 9.9+: A quiet Old Hunstanton bolthole with parking, a private yard and a full kitchen for cooking the day's catch.
3. Cottage for 4 people - 9.8+: A sea-view cottage in Cromer with parking and a proper kitchen, a short walk from the pier and the crab stalls.

The Norfolk Coast runs from Hunstanton on the Wash east to Cromer, a low ribbon of saltmarsh, dunes, pine woods and flint villages.

🥗Where to eat on the Norfolk Coast?

According to Google Maps data and reviews, Socius is the best rated restaurant on the Norfolk Coast. Below is a table showing the top 5 highly-rated restaurants hand-picked by our travel experts.

⭐Our guests' recommendation: Our guest travellers recommend The Wiveton Bell on the Norfolk Coast: a proper village pub cooking Blakeney samphire, local mussels and estate meat, with a fire lit well into spring.

1. Watch the seals at Blakeney Point
2. Walk Holkham's pine-backed sands
3. Eat crab on Cromer pier
4. Hunt fossils at West Runton
5. Ride the Bittern Line
6. Buy mussels at Brancaster Staithe
7. Hike the Norfolk Coast Path

1. Watch the seals at Blakeney Point

   Boat trips leave from Morston Quay on the tide and run out to the shingle spit at Blakeney Point, home to England's largest colony of grey and common seals. Pups arrive in early summer and again from late autumn, and the skippers cut the engine so you drift within a few metres of the haul-out. Book ahead in August, take a coat whatever the forecast, and build the rest of the day around the quay's crab sheds and the flint lanes of Blakeney village.

2. Walk Holkham's pine-backed sands

   From Lady Anne's Drive a boardwalk crosses the pines onto a beach so wide the sea can sit a kilometre out. Turn west for empty sand and saltmarsh creeks, east for Wells-next-the-Sea and its row of painted beach huts. Behind the dunes, the Holkham estate offers a walled kitchen garden, a lake circuit and a deer herd that barely looks up as you pass. It is the coast's best long, flat walk, and it works in any season.

3. Eat crab on Cromer pier

   Cromer crab is the coast's signature dish, hand-picked from small day boats that launch straight off the beach. Buy a dressed crab from a stall on the seafront, take it back to your cottage kitchen with brown bread and a lemon, or eat it in one of the town's seafood rooms. Then walk the pier to the Pavilion Theatre, still running Britain's last end-of-pier variety show, and watch the lifeboat station from the very end.

4. Hunt fossils at West Runton

   The crumbling cliffs between West Runton and Overstrand hold Cretaceous brachiopods, echinoids and sponges, plus ice-age mammal bones washed from the forest bed. This is where the West Runton elephant, one of Britain's most complete mammoth skeletons, came out of the cliff. Search the freshly turned shingle at low tide rather than digging, and go after a winter storm for the richest pickings. Hunstanton's striped cliffs are the place for ammonites and shark's teeth.

5. Ride the Bittern Line

   The Bittern Line runs 30 miles from Norwich to Sheringham through reedbed, marsh and farmland, and it is the easiest way to leave the car at the cottage for a day. Get off at Salhouse for the boardwalks of Salhouse Broad, at Wroxham for a river cruise, or stay on to Cromer for crab and the pier. The line takes its name from the bittern, the booming heron that still breeds in the wetlands it crosses.

6. Buy mussels at Brancaster Staithe

   Brancaster mussels are dredged from the creeks between September and April and sold from sheds on the staithe, often within an hour of landing. Take a bagful back to a cottage kitchen, cook them with cider or white wine, and you have the cheapest and best meal of the week. Come in summer instead and the same creeks fill with dinghies, while the Norfolk Coast's samphire beds nearby are cut through July and August.

7. Hike the Norfolk Coast Path

   The waymarked Norfolk Coast Path links Hunstanton to Cromer along sea walls, dunes and marsh embankments, and the ground stays flat the whole way. Walk a village-to-village section, then catch the Coasthopper bus back to your cottage. If you want more of the county before or after, the wider holiday cottages and lettings across Norfolk and the quieter coast and heaths of Suffolk pick up where this path ends.