Round Norfolk Walk Day 8 - Sedgefield to Burnham Market

Distance: 21 miles
Ascent: 200m
Weather: warm and sunny, windy on the coast
Greenfinch, hare, mallards

Today's walk was considerably less straight than yesterday's.  It was very warm as we set off, laden down with water (some in glass bottles that were drunk and binned at the first opportunity)

A bit of walking by the road took us back to where we'd left the Peddar's Way yesterday evening,  and then we were on wide grassy tracks alongside fields, with wild borders and hedges.  Wildflowers including alexanders, devil's bit scabious, white campion, briar rose. Cow parsley, sweet ciciley and an absolutely giant thistle. In the very far distance I thought I had a possible first sighting of the sea, and it was! 5p to me! A bit further on we turned a corner, and there was definitely sand, water, off shore wind turbines and the Lincolnshire coast. Also some really nice houses.

We arrived at the sand dunes  and a sign that marked the end of our Peddar's Way walk. The actual route goes into Hunstanton,  but we're missing the end off and turning east along the coastal path. The salt marshes had lots of little egrets and black-headed gulls, and we saw a couple of terns. (Sandwich or little?)

There were typical seaside plants like thrift, pink and white striped bindweed, birds foot trefoil and tormantil - some people were taking photos, we hope of the flowers, not of dog poo which was also attracting quite a lot of attention.
Ice creams were had at the nature reserve visitor centre and we used their environmentally friendly natural toilets. Not quite so friendly on the nose.

We stopped for first lunch at a bench overlooking the salt marsh, watching the plovers and badly behaved pets.

The path takes a funny detour around Titchwell, up a road, and along a road and the around a field edge before reaching a track that leads back to the coast at Brancaster. This is probably to avoid walking along the main road as there's no access through the marsh there. It looks to be a great spot for blackberry picking later in the year. Up one of the lanes was a scruffy little hippy camp site, and judging by the blankets hung out from the trees, it is wash day.

Back on the coast, there was a section on a narrow strip of wooden board walk, where we met a few other walkers, in various states of cheerfulness. A late second lunch was had at a bench by some reedbeds, where we heard a cuckoo and warblers. There are some very posh houses along here, although the flood markers are sobering, especially the one from 1953 that was almost at head height, well above some of the lower lying properties.

At Deepdale and Norton marshes we walked around the sea defences, a big dyke drained by a water pump creating agricultural land and wetland on one side and tidal salt marshes on the other.

We saw a lot of birds, despite the wind and lack of binoculars, including lapwing, avocets and babies, redshank, golden plover, reed bunting, tufty duck, coot and babies, shoveler, shelduck,pied wagtail and a mute swan. There was lots of activity on some of the farther ponds, but it was too far to see without bins. We decided it was probably for the best that we didn't have ours,  as we'd probably still be out there.

We left the path near the pretty Burnham Overy windmill and detoured inland along Marsh Lane (a green lane that wasn't itself marshy) to Burnham Market . We are staying at The Nelson,  named after the Lord Admiral,  who was from round here.