Old Hunstanton

Striped Cliffs and West-Facing Sands

The cliffs here are striped: orange Carstone at the base, a band of red chalk in the middle, white chalk on top, all of it laid down between 108 and 99 million years ago. Fulmars nest along the face. People walk the clifftop looking for ammonites, belemnites and shark's teeth, and the disused lighthouse and the ruins of St Edmund's Chapel, built in 1272, sit up there among the fossils.

Below the cliffs, sand dunes, pinewoods and a line of beach huts separate the village from a broad sandy beach. It's dog-friendly. Because Old Hunstanton faces west, it gets sunsets over the sea, which is not something most east-coast resorts can offer.

Beachside Inns and Links

The Ancient Mariner Inn sits right on the edge of it, with a garden that opens onto the beach and a west-facing terrace for the sunsets. The buildings were barns and stabling for a Norfolk farmhouse from the 1600s. Chestnut reopened them in March 2026 after a refurbishment that kept the boat, the beams and the fireplace and added sea-view windows. The menu runs to potted local crab, beer-battered fish with triple-cooked chips, Mariner's pies and sirloin with peppercorn sauce, and there are sausage rolls at the bar. Dogs are as welcome as walkers. Some regulars still miss the old curry.

Next door, the Le Strange Arms is a seaside hotel with lawns running down to the beach, named for the family who were lords of the manor from Domesday until after the Second World War. Half a mile off is Hunstanton Golf Club, a championship links laid out in 1891 after Hamon le Strange put up £30 for the original nine holes.

The Neptune and the Coastal Trail

For dinner there is The Neptune, a Michelin-starred restaurant-with-rooms in an 18th-century coaching inn on Old Hunstanton Road. Kevin Mangeolles cooks alone; his wife Jacki runs the front of house. They opened it in August 2007 and have held the star since 2009.

Old Hunstanton is the western start of the Norfolk Coast Path. The trail begins at the RNLI lifeboat station on Sea Lane, which keeps one of only four RNLI inshore rescue hovercraft and is open to visitors, and runs behind the dunes and alongside the golf course toward Thornham. The Peddars Way meets it at Holme-next-the-Sea, just east, where a boardwalk crosses Holme Dunes and the beach beyond is where the 4,000-year-old timber circle Seahenge was found.

Church, Smugglers and Connections

St Mary's, up in the village, is 14th-century work raised by the Le Stranges. Pevsner called it "perhaps the most exciting Dec parish church in Norfolk." In the churchyard are the graves of a customs officer and a dragoon killed by smugglers in 1784; no one was ever convicted.

The village has a shop, the pubs, cafés and a playground, all within walking distance. King's Lynn station is about sixteen miles down the A149, and the Lynx Coastliner 36 runs through roughly hourly.

Wodehouse at Hunstanton Hall

P. G. Wodehouse used to stay at Hunstanton Hall. The pig Empress of Blandings is said to be based on one kept in the hall's pigsty while he was there.