North Sea Cycle Route - Framlingham to Norwich
The lanes, the fields, water towers and sky of Norfolk
Ride Overview
Another day, another castle, for on this fifth stage there’s the fifth castle of the route. (And yes, there are many more to come in the days ahead!) Anyone would think that England was much threatened by outsiders - only it was the invaders who built the castles to keep the restless natives in order. Today’s stage from Framlingham’s fortress to Norwich’s finest motte and bailey, continues the East Anglian cycling theme of gentle agricultural landscapes, arrestingly lovely villages and wide-eyed skies. The ride edges into the first of several National Parks, the Norfolk Broads, although this one is a little harder to navigate on two wheels.
Ride Practicalities
The route is well signed throughout as NCN 1
START/FINISH: Framlingham/Norwich DISTANCE: 89km TOTAL ASCENT: 560m TERRAIN AND SURFACES: Quiet country lanes with little traffic. Traffic-free cycle paths thorugh Norwich RECOMMENDED CAFÈS/PUBS/ACCOMMODATION: Beccles, Twyfords, Norwich; Strangers (coffee), 21 Pottergate Yalm, Food Hall - big choice of eats. The Fat Cat pub West End Street. Other places remain for you to discover based on budget, mood and need. NEARBY MAINLINE TRAIN SERVICES: Beccles, Norwich
PLACES TO VISIT; Norwich Cathedral LINKS TO OTHER RIDES: NCN1 Stage 4 and stage 6
Ride notes
You could rush for the cathedral eighty kilometres away, (the most splendid of the whole route), for the road to Norwich is flat and largely traffic-free. You could ride through it all and dismiss what you see as ‘just fields’ or ‘just another old oak tree’, But that would be to negate the point of riding across the sugar-beeted, wide-skied land, where the rooks keep you company.
A rook taken by Francesco Schiavone courtesy of WikiCommons.
Today’s route is in corvid country. The fields are full of crows, those big black singular birds with their scraggy feet and pick-axe beaks. There are rooks too. Over the last fifty years, their numbers have increased by over 150% in the UK and they seem to particularly love Norfolk. They are the farmers’ friends as they eat ‘pests’ such as leather jackets, wireworms and crane flies. They are highly sociable, intelligent, adaptable and create life-long partnerships. The crowd in a field will look up as you pedal past, watching you as you ride. A kraa will be shared between them, commenting on your pedalling style, your speed, or lack of it. Some nod in assent, others kraa back with a different view. And when they’ve had enough of your pedalling, they lunge untidily and noisily into the air, creating ragged black ribbons which trail across the sky. They are the sound makers of Norfolk.
A field of sugar beet
It’s not all gloom in England’s nature depleted world. (‘Britain is bottom of the 14 European nations for biodiversity’, Guardian 2022). The numbers of Pink-footed Geese have increased 10-fold in the past 70 years. That is globally significant, as around 85% of the world population of the Pink-footed geese winter in the UK. Unless you are riding this route in winter, you are however, unlikely to see any of the geese, but what you will see are fields and fields filled with the reason why their numbers have expanded. Sugar Beet. As the crop is harvested in September, the tops are left in the field which are then gobbled up by the geese when they arrive later in the autumn. Whilst in the fields, the geese fertilise them with their droppings, and because there is so much beet to eat, they don’t bother to destroy the winter wheat growing in neighbouring fields. Sugar beet - good for farmers, good for geese. However, the twist in the tale is that as of January 2023, the UK government have allowed the sugar beet farmers to continue their use of neocotinoid insecticide which kills damaging pests as well as bees. Bees are in crisis in the UK. No bees to fertilise crops, no crops to feed humans. The logical end being, no humans. Something to ponder on as you ride.
The Norfolk Broads
As you ride along the single-track sandy-edged lanes, digesting the sugar beet story as you go, you soon arrive on the edge of the Norfolk Broads. They might look natural, but they are man-made - the result of 200 hundred years of peat digging between the 12th and 14th centuries. Sea levels then rose, flooded the pits and channels. A catastrophe turned into a national park.
Norwich Cathedral
After watching boats chug upon the grey waters of the Broads, you ride through a willow-ed landscape, flat and green, into Norwich which has been voted as the ‘Best city in the UK to work’ (Guardian) and one of ‘The world’s top fifty small cities’ (The Times). The castle is the finest Norman Motte and Bailey in the land, the cathedral the medieval diamond of the NCN 1. The city is more than just these two buildings; the market square is one of the oldest and largest markets in the UK, Elms Hill is one of the most photographed streets of any city in the UK. As you potter around, have coffee in Strangers in Pottergate, and end the day in the Fat Cat Pub on West End street.
Every route on this website has been carefully researched as well as ridden. However situations on the ground can change quickly. If you know of changes to this route, or cafes, pubs and the like which you think other cyclists need to know about, feel free to share your thoughts below.
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