Once a fishing community, the pretty village of Overstrand guards secrets of a rather more disreputable trade.

Walking the Paston Way, you’ll follow paths once used by smugglers under cover of night. There’s a clue at The Old Mill House on Mundesley Road, an idyllic rural bolthole favoured by centuries of writers including poet Algernon C Swinburne, who called it ‘the home that smiled us welcome’. In the wall there’s a narrow ‘squint’, or ‘hagioscope’, an inconspicuous opening with a view across the sea to look out for ships slipping in from Holland carrying illicit cargos.

Smugglers often buried this contraband in a field on the right hand side of Mill Lane at the brow of the hill, known to locals as Hickerman’s Folly. According to rumour, Hickerman was a riding officer from Cromer, determined to seize an illegal stash as the gang dug it up. They hauled him off his horse and left him tethered to a gate, gagged and blindfolded. The swag was spirited away along shadowy lanes, possibly to Rookery Farm at Trunch. Rookery Farm is long gone, but the footpaths remain, linking Trunch with Overstrand as part of the much-loved Paston Way.

As you gaze over rolling farmland on this beautiful walking route, imagine the poets and plunderers who trod this path before you. And remember, locals named a field after a lawman’s defeat. Where do you think those long ago loyalties lay? After all, there’s always a dash of romance in disobedience