If you’re looking for an easy pub to pub walk, try Blicking to Aylsham. The old Midland and Great Northern railway north of Aylsham is now part of the Weavers’ Way long distance path, linked to a circular walk taking in the wider Blickling Hall estate lands.
Stroll along the leafy former railway line, turn onto a path alongside the Blickling road and follow it to Silvergate Lane opposite pretty Blickling Church. South of the Church the estate’s old icehouse nestles in the trees, from the days before refrigeration (used until the 1930s). Silvergate Lane’s picturesque hamlet of estate workers cottages was home to the estate’s saw mill.
The route joins a tree-lined avenue leading to Aylsham Old Hall. Completed in 1689, it’s been owned by the Blickling estate since 1751. The avenue and an ornamental canal survive from original Dutch-style gardens, reflected by the architecture of a barn with curved Dutch brick gables, a distinctive feature found on a number of buildings in Aylsham and along the Bure Valley.
Aylsham’s lovely Georgian market place is an outlying portion of the estate, where the National Trust has now inherited the Lordship of the Manor of Aylsham-Lancaster. The Buttlands is also part of it. Now a free car park, it once rang with the voices of 14th century archers, cheering and jeering as they honed their skills. Learn more at the heritage centre in the churchyard of St Michael and All Angels just off the marketplace.
