Norwich

Ale Trails and Restaurant Rows

The Fat Cat pours up to thirty cask and craft ales at once and has twice been named CAMRA National Pub of the Year, which is the sort of thing that draws people to a city for a weekend without ever intending to see a cathedral. It sits at the end of the Historic Norwich Ale Trail, which begins across town at the Adam & Eve. That pub, tucked behind the cathedral on Bishopgate, is believed to be the oldest in Norwich, referenced from 1249 when it brewed for the monks of the Great Hospital. A Saxon well survives under the lower bar. The remains of a medieval monk turned up during cellar work in the 1970s. It still serves Woodforde's and welcomes dogs.

Most of the eating happens on St Benedicts Street, the city's restaurant row running west off the Norwich Lanes. Italian at Pinocchios, Turkish at Haggle, Basque at Don Txoko, and Benedicts, where chef Richard Bainbridge cooks contemporary British and was named Restaurant of the Year at the 2023 Norfolk Food & Drink Awards. For something cheaper, the Grosvenor Fish Bar has been run by the same family for around 120 years and sells a wrap called Bass with Sass — fried bass, mango chutney, lettuce. The Waffle House has been a Lanes fixture for over forty years. Shiki in Tombland has done sushi and ramen since 2004.

The Lanes, Market and Elm Hill

The Lanes themselves are a warren of narrow, partly cobbled streets thick with independent shops, cafés and galleries — the best base if you're not bringing a car. The Book Hive curates its shelves by hand. Jarrold, the family department store on London Street, has traded here since the early 1800s and printed the first edition of Anna Sewell's Black Beauty in 1878.

Norwich Market has run on the same site for over 900 years — around 200 stalls under bright multi-coloured roofs beneath City Hall, and the best cheap lunch in the city. Around the corner, Elm Hill is Norwich's most complete medieval street, cobbled and lined with Tudor houses. A fire in 1507 destroyed over 700 houses across the city; on Elm Hill, only the Britons Arms survived, and it still stands.

Castle and Cathedral

The Norman castle keep reopened in August 2025 after a £27.5m redevelopment that opened all five floors for the first time. The cathedral nearby has the second-tallest spire in England at 315 feet, and cloisters that are the only two-storey ones in the country, carved with nearly 400 roof bosses. Edith Cavell, the nurse shot in 1915 for helping soldiers escape occupied Belgium, is buried just outside the south transept.

Heath and River

For air, walk up to Mousehold Heath — 184 acres of wood and heath with the best views of the skyline. The River Wensum runs through the middle of everything, with willows, swans and a path past Cow Tower, a brick artillery tower from 1399.

Trains and Canaries

Trains reach London Liverpool Street in about 90 minutes, roughly 34 a day. The football club is nicknamed the Canaries, after a caged-bird trade the Dutch and Flemish refugees brought here in the sixteenth century and which has since vanished almost entirely. By 1900 the city had around 3,000 canary breeders. Now it has the shirts.