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Ben Weeks takes a tour through Lord Nelson’s home county, visiting locations from the admiral’s life, sites that memorialise the hero of Trafalgar, and the stretches of glorious country roads that link them together.
Who is Norfolk’s most famous personality? Could it be comedian, actor, author, national treasure, and long-time resident of the county Stephen Fry? Possibly. How about television chef, cookery-book writer, and one-time owner of Norwich City football club, Deliah Smith? Potentially. Or what about famed chat-show presenter, podcaster, and North Norfolk Radio DJ Alan Partridge?
Probably. But there’s someone else, someone of even greater national significance, someone who has never provided a supermarket TV advert voiceover, never embarrassingly bellowed “Let’s be havin’ you!” to a stadium of football fans, and, most importantly, is a real person.
Birth of a legend
Horatio Nelson (or Vice-Admiral of the White Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, 1st Duke of Bronte, to give him his ‘proper’ name) was born in the small village of Burnham Thorpe in Norfolk in 1758. But there’s nowhere in Burnham Thorpe that provides the kind of breakfast required for a long day in the saddle, so I met my regular riding buddy Tony in the North Norfolk town of Holt.
Here, a great little café by the name of Horatio’s serves up a range of cooked breakfasts, including the mahoosive ‘Full Nelson’ or the marginally lighter ‘Half Nelson’. If you’re visiting Holt later in the day, ‘Nelson Fries 4 U’ fish and chip shop is just around the corner.
We left Holt, heading west along narrow lanes through stubble fields and high hedgerows, with buzzards soaring above and guinea fowl scuttling through the verges. This is not fast riding; the narrow lanes of tarmac (which often have a line of gravel down their middle) and unpredictable wildlife limit the mph.
But sitting high on an adventure bike is a great place from which to enjoy the countryside rolling past, including the majestic ruins of Binham Priory, destroyed in 1539 following the dissolution of the monasteries and gifted to Sir Thomas Paston, who dismantled some of the buildings to provide stone for a house. Remember that name…
Burnham Thorpe is only a tiny village, but it makes a huge amount of its Nelson links: there’s The Lord Nelson pub complete with its mini Nelson museum, a village sign proclaiming Burnham Thorpe the birthplace of Horatio Nelson, and a sculpture of Nelson carved from the stump of an old maple tree which stands on the other side of the road from Nelson Memorial Hall and just around the corner from Nelson Close.
Horatio’s father, the Reverend Edmund Nelson, was the rector of the village church, and Nelson junior was born in the parsonage which, despite wooden signposts around the village pointing towards the ‘Site of Nelson’s birthplace’, was pulled down in 1803. All that can be seen now is a plaque on a brick wall by the road and a small model of the HMS Victory mounted above the full-height windows of the barn conversion that stands next to it.
From sea to school
A short ride north along narrow but die-straight lanes took us to the Norfolk coast at Burnham Overy Staithe. A looping one-way street takes us along the quayside, beyond which numerous boats bob about in the rapidly incoming tide. The maze of channels that thread through the sandbanks is where Nelson learned to sail as a boy.
After such claustrophobic riding, we were yearning for some slightly more open roads. Luckily, our next stop was in Norwich itself, and between us and there lay 37 miles of cross county roads. The B1355 threads its way casually through picturesque villages like Burnham Market’ (another of the seven ‘Burnhams’ in this part of the world and home to another ‘The Nelson’ pub), and North and South Creake, before reaching the town of Fakenham.
A swift swing around the bypass took us onto the A1067, and the revs began to climb. This road is curving, rather than twisting, and a few villages require the throttle to be eased off, but there’s plenty of free-flowing national speed limit tarmac to be devoured before the suburbs, then the congested city streets of the city of Norwich.
In addition to Norwich Cathedral itself (whose mighty spire at 96m is the second tallest in the UK), the cathedral grounds also house the Norwich School, a private selective day school (in other words, a bit posh) which Nelson attended between 1768 and 1769 when it was the King Edward VI Grammar School.
His limited time there hasn’t stopped the school from making the most of their famous former student, naming one of their houses (I told you it was posh) after him and placing a statue of Nelson in the grounds. Nelson left the school in Norwich to attend a school in North Walsham.
That’s our next destination, but by this point it was nearly lunchtime, our stomachs were rumbling, and Tony and I were beginning to wish we’d gone for the ‘Full Nelson’ breakfast. A detour to a suitably Nelson themed lunch-stop beckoned.
The ride out of Norwich took us past the ‘Premier Inn Norwich Nelson City Centre’. I can’t help feeling they’ve shoehorned the Nelson reference into that one. The hotel is ugly as sin, currently closed, and awaiting bulldozing before the site is redeveloped.
Whether any shiny new building will carry the Nelson brand remains to be seen. We climb away from the city centre through Mousehold Heath, the remnants of a once much larger heathland that once stretched from the city to the Norfolk broads. The tree-shaded road that snakes through it is deliciously serpentine; if only it were ten-times longer.
Beer and branding
We headed into Broadland and towards the village of Woodbastwick. What ties does this unassuming little hamlet have to Admiral Nelson? None that I’m aware of. At least, not directly. But Woodbastwick is home to the Woodforde’s Brewery and its Fur and Feather Pub, and you only have to glance its simple logo to understand why it’s an appropriate pitstop for a Nelson themed tour.
Step inside and the beers on offer, such as Nelson’s Revenge and Admiralty Reserve, emphasise the point. But even if you’re just ordering a Coke, the chances are that Nelson’s unmistakable icon will feature on your glass.
After a hydration break (all the rage, these days) and a delicious roast beef ciabatta, we helmet up again to ride to North Walsham. The route took us from Salhouse towards Wroxham via a rolling stretch of road known locally as ‘the hills and holes’. Wroxham is the self-proclaimed ‘Capital of the Broads’ and a tourist hotspot, so expect slow moving traffic over its comically humped bridge and pedestrians seemingly unaware of how a road functions.
But out of the village riding conditions improve, including a stretch of the most rural dual carriageway you’re ever likely to ride: two narrow, ever-so-slightly shingly lanes separated by a vegetated central reservation. The national speed limit may apply here, but you’d be nuts to try and get anywhere near it.
Nelson attended Paston Free School in North Walsham from 1769 to 1771 when, at the age of just 12 years old, he first went to sea. These days the school is Paston College, and a plaque on the wall outside (there are a lot of these on this tour) proudly claims its former pupil. Incidentally, the school was founded in 1606 by Sir William Paston, the great great great great nephew of Sir Thomas Paston, the chap who stripped the stone from Binham Priory. Norfolk’s a bit like that.
Setting sail
Nelson first set to sea, before he was even a teenager, from the Chatham Dockyard on the River Medway in Kent. But that’s a heck of a way for us to ride on what’s meant to be a day tour. However, Great Yarmouth on Norfolk’s east coast has its own strong ties to the man, and it’s a far more manageable distance.
Plus, 25 miles of wonderful Broadland A-road stretch between North Walsham and Great Yarmouth, curving past and over the vast expanses of water that give the area its name as it winds towards the coast. It was yet more joyous riding, and not even the ever-watchful lenses of the average speed cameras could spoil it.
Arriving at Great Yarmouth, we rode through the outskirts of the seaside town. Shortly after turning into a slightly grim looking industrial estate and pulling up outside the offices of a chartered accountant and next to a bingo hall, Tony’s voice appeared in my headset: “Where the hell are we?” A fair question. There’s nothing to suggest this distinctly underwhelming location is a site of any importance whatsoever. Until, that is, you spot the panels below the windows.
This unassuming building was once The Wrestlers Inn, and it was here, after the Battle of the Nile and whilst staying at the inn, that Nelson gave one of his most famous speeches, in which he said “I am myself a Norfolk man and glory in being so”. Naturally, it was met with rapturous applause, and shortly after Nelson was made a ‘Freeman of the Borough of Great Yarmouth’.
The Wrestlers is also the inn where a young waiter by the name of James Sharma was pressganged into joining the navy. He was serving onboard the HMS Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar on 21 October 1805 when Nelson was shot by a French sniper, subsequently dying from his injuries.
Leaving The Wrestlers we rode towards the seafront, turning right to cruise south along the main street lined with amusement arcades, restaurants, and hotels (including, of course, an obligatory Nelson Hotel) on one side and the North Sea on the other.
After leaving the lights and noise of the bars and amusements in our mirrors, we swung away from the sea and into another industrial estate near the docks, this one even drearier than the first. But there was no voice from Tony asking why this time. He could see.
Standing in the middle of grey and rusting warehouses, surrounded by ornate metal fencing, stands the Norfolk Naval Pillar. This column monument was built in 1817-1819 to honour Nelson and his victories, predating Nelson’s column in Trafalgar Square by over two decades.
Unlike the monument in central London, Great Yarmouth’s version does not feature Nelson on the top of the pillar, but Britannia, giving the memorial its alternative name: the Britannia Monument. She stands there facing inland, looking in the direction of Nelson’s birthplace in Burnham Thorpe.
A fitting end
In many respects, this would be the perfect place to bring this route to an end. But a slightly grimy industrial estate is no place for any motorcycle tour to conclude, let alone one celebrating one of the country’s most important military leaders. But where next? I had an idea.
The A143 that runs southwest from Great Yarmouth is a pleasing one to ride. It rolls first towards St Olaves, crossing a duo of bridges over the River Waveney and a manmade watercourse before entering marshland that, were it not for the windpumps dotted across the Norfolk landscape, would still be under water.
Between St Olaves and Haddiscoe the road swings left then right, then left then right again as it slithers towards the marginally higher ground beyond the marsh. Here we leave the main road and head back into the country lanes as we ride towards the finale.
Vice Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson is buried in the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral in London, directly under the cathedral’s dome. Again, a little too far for a day tour. The site of his most famous victory is even less accessible by motorbike: the Battle of Trafalgar took place in the Atlantic Ocean off the southwest coast of Spain near Cape Trafalgar. But there is a way to get your motorcycle onto the water at the end of this tour.
From the edge of the marshland at the delightfully titled Nogdam End a narrow road runs as far as the south bank of the River Yare. Here, a short chain-ferry journey carried me, Tony and our bikes over the water to the north bank, where we once again rolled back onto terra firma. Is this an experience directly comparable with Nelson’s voyages? Don’t be ridiculous.
I doubt Nelson ever had to share his deck with a Kia Picanto. But it’s about as close to it as it’s possible to get on two wheels in Norfolk. And there’s a further benefit. In Reedham, the village a short distance from the ferry, a welcoming inn with scenic riverside seating offers welcome sustenance at the end of a long day’s riding. And guess the name of the pub.
The Route
Plug these waypoints into your SatNav device to follow, as near as dammit, the route. You can also find a GPX file of the ride to follow at: www.bit.ly/ABRNelson.
- Horatio’s 20 Bull St, Holt NR25 6HP
- Nelson’s birthplace, Burnham Thorpe, King’s Lynn PE31 8HW
- Burnham Overy Staithe, King’s Lynn PE31 8FF
- Norwich Cathedral, The Close, Norwich, NR1 4DH
- Woodforde’s Brewery, Woodbastwick Road, Norwich NR13 6HQ
- Paston College, Grammar School Rd, North Walsham NR28 9JL
- The Wrestlers Inn, Church Plain, 7 Priory Plain, Great Yarmouth NR30 1PL
- Norfolk Naval Pillar, Fenner Road, Great Yarmouth, NR30 3PX
- Gariannonum Roman Fort, Butt Lane, Burgh Castle NR31 9QG
- Reedham Chain Ferry, Reedham NR13 3HA
- The Lord Nelson, 38 Riverside, Reedham, Norwich NR13 3TE
Total distance: 120 miles
A great route is even better when you’ve got a few mates along for the ride. JUSTRIDE is being developed specifically for motorcyclists, bringing route planning, turn-by-turn navigation and group riding tools together in one app. You’ll be able to discover routes, share them with mates, and stay in touch with your riding pals while out on the road, without having to rely on a jumble of map links and messaging apps. The app will also feature a growing collection of ABR routes, like the Nelson Trail you’re reading right now. JUSTRIDE is due to launch this summer, so head to www.justride-app.com to find out more.
