Treasure Trails NORFOLK
TAILOR MADE TRAILS 
The Trail was reviewed in the Eastern Daily Press on the 23rd October 2010:
The summer might be over, but that’s no excuse to sit inside with the TV remote this half-term
When was the last time you re-discovered the great outdoors at one of your local gems and spent some quality time with your friends and family? If you can’t remember, it’s time to grab a clue map and head to Blickling Hall…
That’s exactly what Steph Makins from EnjoyNorwich.com did with her family, when she took them to complete The Big Blickling Treasure Trail.
Steph, husband Andrew and two-and-a-half-year-old Jasper got their comfy shoes on and headed to Blickling Hall, only 15 miles from Norwich.
Read on to find out if they managed to crack the code...
We wanted to do an outdoor-sy activity as a family, and what better surroundings than the stunning Blickling Hall?
Armed with our clue map, we decided to put our treasure-hunting skills to the test
The trail is flexible, with no set route, but ‘zones’ in which certain clues are based.
We decided to tackle the hall itself first. The majority of the clues are fairly straightforward, although a couple are real brain-teasers. One in particular saw us going up and down a staircase several times!
By way of a break from clue-hunting we then took our little ball of energy to the children’s play area. With picnic tables and wooden climbing frames shaped like a tractor and a castle he was in his element. We had our picnic lunch before tackling the outside zones of the trail.
The gardens and grounds of Blickling Hall are a visitor attraction in themselves, and worthy of a good few hours’exploration. Stunningly beautiful, expansive in size and with plenty to discover, the bike hire option is a great way of cruising the leafy lanes and pathways.
The outside clues enabled us to explore areas of Blickling Hall that we’d never previously seen, such as the Dell, the Bug Hotel, the Secret Garden and the lovely Sitooterie. I won’t tell you too much more about these, as it’s much nicer if you discover them for yourself.
We took our time navigating the trail,choosing instead to enjoy every single inch of the location, but it could easily be completed in a couple of hours if you tackled it at pace.
That said, even after spending a very full day there, there was still more to appreciate. We barely had time to visit the well-stocked shop, the restaurant or the café.
The great thing about The Big Blickling Treasure Trail is that it means you explore the stunning hall and gardens pretty much in their entirety.
We’d previously visited Blickling Hall several times and, until this day, had never seen all that we did on this occasion.
A good excuse for the family to get out and work together, the trail is a really enjoyable day out.
And if you manage to solve all the clues and submit your entry into the treasure trail competition, you could win a set of mountain bikes or a week away in a National Trust holiday cottage.
Now that would be a pretty special day out…
Words: Steph Makins of www.EnjoyNorwich.com
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