Exploring the Deep History Coast in Norfolk

As we gazed into the phone, our view of the sea vanished, to be replaced by a grazing mammoth sauntering across the grassland – augmented reality rather than actual, but exploring the Deep History Coast in Norfolk was proving full of surprises.

Once mammoths really did roam this part of the country – the country’s oldest fossilized skeleton was found at West Runton – while the oldest known footprints of early humans outside Africa were discovered at nearby Happisburgh.

Add that to walking routes along the beach and cliffs, an app to give you extra information and those little AR bonuses to take you back to prehistoric times, and the North Norfolk Deep History Coast trail was perfect to try with kids.

For starters, it gives you a good excuse to go beach hopping (if we needed one), with 11 stops between Weybourne and Cart Gap, and an even better excuse to encourage my daughter away from her sandcastle building to go for a walk.

For some of the best beaches in Norfolk with kids, check out a few of my favourites

It’s far more tempting to stroll along the sand if you know you’re going to collect virtual pieces of mammoth, which you’ve then got to try to rearrange into a full skeleton against the clock.

Or to set off for a walk along the clifftops when you find yourself being given new bits of quirky information as you go – everything from information on fossilised hyena poo to prehistoric rhino, ancient deer and even monkeys which once lived in Norfolk.

Using GPS to locate you, you also get an alert whenever you’re approaching a viewpoint or have collected some more trivia (plus it’s a helpful indicator of how much longer you’ve got to walk!)

There’s no cheating either! If you don’t walk the path, you don’t get to tick it off… useful if you’re trying to persuade an eight-year-old to go just a bit further.

Then the little 360 signs on the app show you how to turn the clock back and get a view of the way the landscape looked long ago. With the breezes blowing off the sea, I didn’t realise there was a commentary too until playing around with it back home, so it’s worth turning your volume up!

At each stop, there are signs with more information on one element of prehistory and another chance to see an AR Stone Age family peeking back at you – the view varies depending where you use it, which is a fun touch.

As we were staying in Cromer, we were almost exactly in the middle of the route, so it was easy to check out a few stretches whether we were heading west to Wells-next-the-Sea and some seal spotting at Morston Quay, or east towards the Norfolk Broads and more seals at Horsey (although we never made it beyond Cart Gap itself).

There’s a handy overview of what the walk is like, and what you can expect to collect too – we chose one walk for the monkey and ancient deer over pollen and water beetles!

And most walks are only a couple of miles long: there are a couple of Norfolk coasthopper bus routes, so you could walk one way and pick up a bus to get back, but this summer we were avoiding public transport where possible, so every walk was a round trip.

You don’t always have to retrace your route: a couple of times, we walked along the beach one way and returned along the cliffs. Occasionally, we found that if we’d ventured to far out towards the sea, the app didn’t recognise that we’d walked the route, but a short detour quickly collected our find.

This did turn out to include an unexpected adventure between Overstrand and Cromer, as it runs alongside the golf course for part of the way (and they mean right alongside, with sheer cliffs on the other!)

You don’t have to venture too far from the towns either – one route takes you through Sheringham itself, along the cafes of the promenade, past a string of murals lining the front to the town’s museums, if you’re looking for more things to do in Sheringham with kids.

This is one of the spots where you can collect a mammoth, as you stroll towards West Runton (where there’s also some great rockpooling), as well as another chance on the beach at Mundesley.

And, handily, in early September there were still plenty of ice cream vans dotted around the car parks so we could refuel in between.

There’s nowhere quite like the Norfolk coast, beaches stretching out into the distance and seemingly twice as much sky, on a clear sunny day or under the dramatic clouds.

And if those virtual mammoths, on our walk from Happisburgh to Cart Gap, were a highlight, so was being able to explore this lovely part of England: watching the sun glitter on the tide pools, spotting a field vole scampering out of the bushes, and getting glimpses of the different sides to this coast from the traditional seaside resorts to the almost empty cliff paths.

I’m just sorry we never made it to the stretch with the violet sea slug! Next time…

For more ideas of things to do in Norfolk with kids and what to do in Norwich with kids, check out my top picks

Deep History Coast in Norfolk: Need to know

The Deep History Coast app is free to download for both iOS and Android – click here for more information.

There are also tips on fossil hunting and beach combing, plus a guide to help identify your finds, as well as ideas on where to find the best rockpools in Norfolk (and what lives in them).

You can also find suggestions of more family attractions and museums along the route, and other activities to try, including making natural art. Or download colouring sheets as a bonus thing to do on a rainy day in Norfolk.

Extra challenges linked to the Deep History Coast also take place during the year, including the mammoth marathon challenge, with a list of 26 things to do on the Deep History Coast in Norfolk this autumn.

Cromer itself is home to the North Norfolk Information Centre, including the Deep History Coast Discovery Zone, with films and displays about geology, the creatures and people who once lived here, and what Doggerland (the area which connected Britain to Scandinavia, now beneath the North Sea) was like.

PIN FOR LATER: NORFOLK DEEP HISTORY COAST

Images copyright MummyTravels

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