Located to the East of Norwich is an area known as Thorpe Marshes, nestled between Whitlingham Broad (check out our visit to Whitlingham) and the Norwich suburb of Thorpe this Norfolk Wildlife Trust site is a place of beauty all year round.
Now one thing to point out straight away is that there is no dedicated parking within the area, therefore you are recommended to either walk to the area or get a bus from the city centre. I will be honest, we did neither and simply parked in the residential streets opposite – On this occasion we will not put were we parked as it would be unfair to encourage people to park outside of others homes. The entrance to Thorpe Marshes is located on Whitlingham Lane, simply use the postcode NR7 0QA.
Following Whittlingham lane down towards the River Yare you have to cross an old railway bridge, obviously if you have push chairs etc you’ll need to carry them over at this point however overall due to the terrain we would not recommend push chairs full stop. At the top of this bridge its a great opportunity to look over the mashes as a whole but also if your fortunate enough you might be crossing at the same time a train passes, something which the kids were super excited about.
Following the route below, you’ll find yourself on a 2.5km walk. Following the banks of the River Yare you’ll see a number of house boats that line the stretch directly opposite Whittlingham Broad in a variety of different conditions, as you’ll see below when we visited someone’s boat had recently sunk and remained partially submerged on the bank.
The path itself is not one made of a ‘hard surface’ therefore if you visit after a recent down pour expect to fight your way through a boggy path. Our visit coincided with the thawing out of Norfolk post a snow flurry which turned the paths into a flooded boggy mess. Yet for us this made it more of an adventure and the kids absolutely loved it, playing games involving the rescuing of a stranded friend, on several occasions that involved all of us getting stuck.
After battling our way through the path we re-joined an established path on ‘Bungalow Lane’ leading back towards the railway line. This crossing is a simple manual gate where you physically cross the line. After crossing this before re-joining Thorpe Road, you pass under a railway bridge
The final stretch of this journey is a nice 0.8km walk down Thorpe Road towards the starting point at the top of Whittlingham Lane. With an overall length of approx 2.5km this walk should take no longer then 45 minutes, the route itself has many branches off so there is plenty to see along the route.
Thanks for taking the time to check out our visit to Thorpe Marshes, if you liked what you read or want to see some other places to visit, check out all our previous posts for plenty of days out and adventures.
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