Information on East Of England
Now this is a place where time does seem to stand still. For centuries much of Eastern England was cut off by forests and something of that luxurious isolation lingers.
This is agricultural country, with open fields and huge horizons which make you ever-conscious of the sky.
You’ll find farms here which are set amongst leisurely, expansive landscapes punctuated by tantalising distant views, such as Ely cathedral ‘floating’ on the Cambridgeshire fens or the sudden sails of yachts and windmills peeking over reedy fringes of the Norfolk Broads – medieval peat diggings flooded to form 150 miles of intimate waterways which are a paradise of boating and wildlife.
Eastern England has a certain sense of dignity, which comes with age.
In Norwich and Peterborough, both with stately cathedrals; in the refined architecture of the Cambridge colleges; in Suffolk’s picturesque medieval wool towns and villages, such as Lavenham or Sudbury; in the ancient abbey gardens at Bury St Edmunds; in Grimes Graves flint mines at Weeting or the Bronze Age excavations at Peterborough’s Flag Fen.
Norfolk’s farmers add a slash of colour to the country landscapes here, growing mustard and fragrant fields of purple lavender, seen at their peak around Heacham in August.
The sea is another source of plenty providing crabs from Cromer, fresh fish landed at Lowestoft and all sorts of seafood still sold on the beach at Aldeburgh.
This whole coastline has plenty to keep you absorbed: there’s bird-watching at Wells-next-the-Sea, Brancaster Staithe and Orford; Aldeburgh holds a prestigious music festival in June; Flatford Mill is just as Constable painted it and the peaceful estuary around Maldon can have changed little since Dark Age Danes paddled along looking for a place to land.
A string of pleasant, seaside towns add their temptations too: Cromer, Southwold or Frinton, the traditional resorts of Yarmouth, Lowestoft and Clacton and Southend-on-Sea, where the world’s longest pleasure pier forms the centrepiece of an exuberant seafront still popular as London’s playground.
