Summer Norfolk Trip Day 2 Part 2 – Wells-next-the-Sea Beach

This blog post is about our Summer Norfolk Trip 2022 Day 2 in Wells-next-the-Sea Beach. It is a continual post from my Summer Norfolk Trip Day 2 Part 1 – Wells & Walsingham Light Railway .

As I mentioned in my previous post, we rode on the train in the late morning.

After the train ride back to Wells station, we went to Wells town centre to eat and play in the beach.

When did we visit:

We visited on a Tuesday afternoon in early August. Very warm 28C, sunny with no clouds and rain, but very windy. The town centre and the beach was full of people as expected given the beautiful weather and school summer holiday.

How easy was it to find the Wells beach car park:

We chose to park at the beach car park because it is much bigger than the town centre car park. Finding the car park was very easy. We searched for “Wells beach car park” on Google map and followed the directions. No tricky parts during our journey from the railway station to the beach car park.

Space availability at Wells beach car park:

As we were driving along Beach Road towards the car park we saw signs saying something like Car Park Closed or FULL . But we saw cars coming out from the opposite direction, meaning it’s possible that either they got turned away because the car park was REALLY FULL, or they were leaving the car park meaning there would be spaces! So we decided to take a look anyway. There was a lot of cars but still managed to find a few empty spaces. YEAH!

After we parked our car we first went to have lunch at A & M Frary . The crab sandwiches we ordered were really nice and fresh. But we did not really like the sourness of our Mixed Seafood pot.

Then we took a stroll around the town centre. We came to a street full of shops, which made us feel like we were in San Kung / Change Chau / Stanley (tourists attraction in Hong Kong which have similar vibrant).

After that we headed back to the beach.

What else are there to see or do at Wells?

There are lots of ideas from the website https://wellsguide.com . I found this website very useful and used it to decide what to do and where to eat.

Things you need to know before you go:

• If you are thinking to do the same itinerary as us, which was train ride —> lunch at Wells town centre, then please read this part. After the train ride back to Wells station, we were thinking whether to leave our car at the car park and walk to Wells Beach (at least 20 mins walk) since we paid for the car park anyway. And we had a car park space here but not sure if there’s any over the beach. But considering the fact that the car park closes at around 5:30pm, and it was already around 1:30pm at that moment, (taken into account we have a 20+ mins walk to Wells town centre) we would only have time to have some lunch there then have to walk back to pick up our car! It would be a waste of time. So we decided to leave the station with our car and drive to Wells beach.
• If you are thinking to park at the Wells beach car park —> eat at Wells town centre —> play at beach, just like us, the please read this part: There is a 25 minutes walk from the beach car park to the town centre (another 25 minutes to walk back). It might take longer if you have younger kids who are not on buggy. We wasted an hour just to do the walking. So after playing at the beach, we decided to leave the beach car park and drove back to the one of the town centre car parks (Port of Wells Private Car Park). Luckily by that time (5:30pm) the car park had spaces and we were able to find one without any waiting.
• I did not plan and study well enough beforehand. I thought there were only two car parks in Wells – 1) Beach car park and 2) Port of Wells. Now that I am writing this post and doing the research there are actually more car parks (see below) in the town centre. So perhaps in the future I would park in the town centre to have lunch at A and M Frary. Then park at the Beach car park to play on the beach.

---

For dinner, I pre booked a table at Sands Restaurant . Food was delicious. Good service. Clean toilets.

We ordered:

• Seafood platter (Prawns, Crayfish, Garlic Anchovies, Smoked Salmon, Shell on Prawns, Pan-Seared Tuna, Oyster, Cockles, Fries and Mixed Leaf) I was disappointed they did not have oyster. J absolutely LOVED the tuna. He asked me what is it and how come it’s so tasty!
• SANDS Salmon Super Food Salad (Grilled Tender Stem, Pomegranate, Quinoa, Alfa Cress, Mint Sunflower Seeds, Dried Cranberries and Mixed Local Leaf). We all love this dish. We all loved the salmon. I also love the salad. It was very refreshing and love the combination of the ingredients.
• Messy Lemon as dessert (Vanilla Poached Lemon, Meringue, Shortbread, Marshmallow and Cream). We finished this dessert within seconds! Yummy. Only thing was that the marshmallows were a bit chewy.

🍕🥪☕️Meals: