Adventuring Abroad: Horsey Beach Seals

In late January, we took a weekend day trip east to Norwich to Horsey Beach. We had been hoping to get out there to see the winter seal colony since the previous winter. We drove the two hours on a day that was very overcast and rainy, and lucked out with better weather at the coast. We tried to visit a National Trust site called Horsey Pump, which is a windmill that helped drain the fens (swamplands) in the area to create arable land. It was marginally open, in that we could walk around the canals there, but the visitors center was closed and *gasp* there wasn't even a tearoom open! We had counted on that for lunch! (Again -- we're so British now.) We ended up subsisting on snacks until we found a fast food spot on the way home from the beach.

The windmill (under construction) at Horsey Pump

Along the canal at Horsey Pump National Trust site

After our brief visit to Horsey Pump, we drove the short distance to the seaside parking lot. We had a bad GPS position initially, but eventually ended up in the right spot. We paid for 2 hours to park, and started our walk. It's impossible to know exactly where the seal colony is when you park, and we ended up being quite a walk from where the seals were actually resting on the beach... probably 1/2 to 3/4 mile. Charlotte, having just returned from Portugal and discovering her love of sand, really wanted to stop and play -- and we realized we were under a bit more of a parking time crunch than we had planned. Paul ended up carrying her on his shoulders a lot of the way, since walking in the sand is hard! (True for everyone, but especially for 3 year old legs.)

"But I just want to dig in the sand!"

Our trek to the seals

We finally reached the larger crowd of people standing around where the seals were resting on the beach. We walked around and found a comfy spot in the sand to sit and watch the seals in action. They are so cool to see in nature -- so awkward while flopping around on the beach, but so agile in the water. We did see a few seals in the water, but most were snoozing on the beach and making lots of wild snoring and braying noises. Charlotte was interested briefly, then returned to her main love -- sand. We enjoyed watching them for about 45 minutes then headed back to the car -- this time on the other side of the dunes (much easier). There were lots of puddles on the dirt path, and Charlotte was thrilled to have her wellies for stomping in some of the more shallow ones.