Holiday apartment in East of England: Broads, coast and culture

East of England combines royal country estates with extensive wetlands and a network of lakes and rivers suitable for boating trips. At the same time, the region is known for visits to well-preserved Roman sites. Between waterways, historic places, heathland and coast, a varied destination emerges, offering nature experiences and cultural discoveries.

Water

In the Broads, visitors can canoe, kayak and go stand-up paddleboarding. Slipways and launching points make it possible to put paddle boats into the water and take them out again. There are also boat-hire services with luxury cruisers and day boats, as well as guided boat tours. Cambridge also offers punt trips on the river as part of its visitor experience. Culinary tours are likewise among the possible activities there as part of the city-break offering.

Nature

The Suffolk & Essex Coast & Heaths National Landscape encompasses a coast of shingle and sand, ancient woodland, heaths, estuaries and salt marshes. The Cley Marshes nature reserve has six observation hides, including the Robert Gillmor Discovery Hide. From there, visitors can enjoy views of ponds and mudflats managed to support breeding and migratory birds. The Broads National Park and The Brecks extend across both counties.

The Suffolk Coast Path runs from Lowestoft to Felixstowe through the Suffolk Coast and Heath National Landscape. A 59-mile route from the outskirts of Ipswich to the coastal town of Southwold also passes through this distinctive historic heathland.

Activities

High Lodge in Thetford Forest has four walking trails ranging from 1 km to 12 km in length. For cyclists and mountain bikers, High Lodge offers trails ranging from green-marked routes to technically demanding, black-marked features. There is also a bicycle-hire service for its cycling trails.

Culture

The historic side of East of England includes both remarkable individual sites and entire collections of buildings. Grime’s Graves is Britain’s only Neolithic flint mine open to visitors. Peckover in Wisbech has a Victorian garden, while Ickworth has an Italian garden considered the oldest surviving example of its kind. Paycocke's in Coggeshall has an Arts-and-Crafts-style cottage garden, where visitors can play croquet or picnic on the lawn.

The Suffolk Wool Towns form a collection of well-preserved medieval market towns with timber-framed houses and historic churches. They include historic market squares, narrow lanes, galleries, antique shops and independent stores; there are also walks through the countryside. In the region's musical history, the Aldeburgh Festival has taken place since 1948 and focuses as a concert festival on the Snape Maltings venue. Snape Maltings on the Suffolk coast offers concerts and events, as well as independent shops, cafés and galleries.

Newmarket is a centre of flat racing and offers visitor experiences centred around horse racing. Together with the Roman sites, gardens and medieval market towns, this creates a broad cultural spectrum ranging from archaeology and architecture to music, trade and horse racing.

Further destinations

In East Anglia, there are ten different destinations for visitors to explore. Further destinations include Faversham, Hollingbourne, Cotswolds, Clacton-On-Sea, Suffolk, Norfolk, Essex, Peterborough, Thurrock, Southend-On-Sea, Hertfordshire, Luton, Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire.

For the overarching travel overview: Great Britain.