Ask when the best time to visit the Norfolk Broads is and you will usually be told July or August. That is when the boats are booked and the moorings are full. It is not when the Broads are at their best.
Once the Norfolk and Suffolk schools go back in the first week of September, the whole area empties, and about seven weeks open up before October half term. If you tour, and particularly if you tour without children, this is the part of the year worth planning around.
The weather is not the problem you think it is
Most people assume September starts the wet half of the year. In east Norfolk it is the opposite. At the Met Office’s Hemsby station, the 1991 to 2020 averages put September rainfall at 52.7mm against August’s 68.8mm. The honest caveat: it rains on almost as many days, 8.7 against 9.2. August is not wetter because it rains more often, it is wetter because when it does rain it comes down harder.
Temperature holds up better than the calendar suggests. September’s mean daily maximum is 18.6C, exactly the same as June’s, and the sea peaks in August so it is still warmer in September than it was in early summer. Air frost in September on this coast averages zero days.
What you lose is light. Sunshine falls from 212 hours in August to 153 in September and 114 in October, and October steps down on every measure: 14.8C, 65.4mm of rain, rain on about eleven days. September is the better of the two. October is still good, but pack for it.
The water empties
Some boat yards drop their prices the moment the school holidays end. Wayford Marine’s 2026 tariff takes a standard eight-person day boat from £130 in peak season to £90 off-peak. Not everyone does it: Hippersons at Beccles charges the same £160 for a full day in October as in August. The Broads Authority also notes that hire boats are typically available March to the end of September, so October is a day out on the water rather than a fortnight aboard.
The birds arrive
Breydon Water is a Ramsar site, a Special Protection Area and an SSSI, carrying an assemblage of 68,175 waterfowl, and autumn is when it earns that. Avocet peak here in spring and autumn at 609 birds, 17.9% of the Great Britain population.
Pink-footed geese start arriving from Iceland and Greenland in late September and build through October, and Breydon’s own designation lists 5,816 of them. Redwing turn up around the end of September and fieldfare in early October, while the swallows go the other way.
Carlton Marshes, the Suffolk Wildlife Trust’s 1,000-acre reserve on the Waveney, calls itself the southern gateway to the Broads National Park. Free entry, and an adult events programme all autumn.
One thing we will not oversell: the grey seals. Pupping at Horsey and Winterton starts in November, not October, and the beach is closed and wardened once it does. An October stay is the run-up, not the main event.
The walking is better
The Angles Way runs 93 miles from Great Yarmouth to Thetford along the Norfolk and Suffolk border, with Burgh Castle and Fritton on the route, close to our gate. Ground that is heavy in midsummer and worse by December is at its firmest in September, and the horseflies and mosquitoes that make a July evening on the marsh a trial have gone.
Burgh Castle is a late third-century Saxon Shore fort, walls still standing around 4.5 metres high and 3.5 metres thick at the base. Free to walk into, dawn to dusk.
There is more on than in August
Heritage Open Days runs ten days in mid-September, free, with around twenty Great Yarmouth venues opening including the Lydia Eva steam drifter and the Town Hall. The Eastern Festival brings three days of racing to Great Yarmouth Racecourse. The Festival of Bowls runs on the seafront from the late August bank holiday to late September with more than 800 competitors. Out There Arts hold their beer and circus festival over four days, and Beccles Town Council run a soapbox derby on a Sunday at the end of the month.
October is thinner: Somerleyton Hall’s Halloween trail in the last week, and the Norwich Beer Festival at The Halls, though that one has missed years so check before travelling.
It is cheaper
Our pitches are £24 a night in low season (October to March) against £32 in high (April to Sept). Hardstanding, 8 metres by 10, electric hookup on all pitches, two dogs per pitch at no extra charge, and the Bell Inn across the road gives our guests 10% off. Adults only, 18 and over, all year.
Mobile signal here is poor and there is no WiFi (yet!). It is the thing our reviews mention most often, so plan for it rather than be surprised by it.
What to actually book
Book the pitch first, because half term is the one week in this window that genuinely sells out. Every family park in Norfolk fills that week. We do not, because nobody under 18 stays here.
Then a day boat, before the end of September while the fleets are still out, from a boatyard that publishes an off-peak rate. Leave the rest alone. The walking, Burgh Castle and Breydon do not need booking, which is rather the point of coming now.
One night is fine. No booking fee, free cancellation up to 28 days before arrival, from £24 a night in October and £32 in September.
Ring 01493 764400 or book online