Mersea Island-Aldeburgh-Southwold-Bacton beach-Holkham
THREE NIGHTS, ABOUT 10 HOURS DRIVING.
London-Mersea: 2 hours
It’s an East Anglian odyssey, but make your first stop in Essex, at Mersea Island’s slat-board Company Shed, and order the seafood platter – a great plate of brown crab, tiger prawns, mussels, cockles, smoked mackerel and locally cured salmon, and proper fortification for a jaunt up the A12.
The Dune House in Thorpeness, Suffolk
Mersea-Thorpeness: 1 hour 30 minutes
Leave the A-road for the pastel-hued town of Aldeburgh, with its shingle beach and fishermen’s huts, and the quirky nearby town of Thorpeness, around a punting-ready boating lake. Lest it all seems a tad bygone, bed down facing the sea just north of Thorpeness in the five-bedroom Dune House – all angles and glass – rentable from Living Architecture, which also manages the silver, cantilevered Balancing Barn near Walberswick.
Thorpeness-Southwold: 30 minutes
Head north to Southwold to play the eccentric slot machines on the pier, created by artist-engineer Tim Hunkin, and watch a film in the Fifties-style Electric Picture Palace, with its usherettes, chandeliers and red drapes. The ‘ferry’ to Walberswick is really a little wooden boat rowed by fifth-generation owner Danni Church or one of her team, ideally preceded by oysters on the quayside and then a pint and plate of mussels in The Anchor at Walberswick.
Eden Hall Cottage, Norfolk
Southwold-Bacton beach: 1 hour 20 minutes
Keep driving north along the coast beyond Great Yarmouth and stay at Eden Hall cottage, a former boarding school near the long Bacton beach, given a sleek greyscale makeover by Plum and Ashby owner Vicky White. Opt for a supper of Cromer crab and venison from the adjoining deer park at the Gunton Arms, a country pub owned by art dealer Ivor Braka and filled with Emin neons, Hirst butterflies and other YBA treasures.
Bacton Beach-Holkham: 1 hour 15 minutes
From here, the beaches on the north Norfolk shore get even more majestic, and the east-coast quirk gives way to something more elegant. So spend a stately final night either at one of the four lodges in the gardens of the Palladian Holkham Hall, surrounded by pinewood trails to the sand, or inland at Wolterton Hall, built by the brother of Robert Walpole, Britain’s first prime minister, and given a bright makeover by interior designers and owners Peter Sheppard and Keith Day.
Holkham Hall-London: 3 hours