Searles Leisure Resort - Fun Days Out

Sandringham House is a royal country house on a large estate in the Norfolk Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It is owned personally by the monarch rather than the Crown, and the house is Grade II* listed. The landscaped gardens, park and woodlands are on the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens, and the site has a history stretching back to Elizabethan times.

Visitors can explore the house and gardens, then walk the woodland and waymarked trails of the Royal Parkland. There is a shop selling estate produce, home and garden wares and plants. For food, the Sandringham Courtyard and the Stables Takeaway Café in the gardens serve breakfast, light bites and sweet treats made with local produce. It suits anyone who enjoys royal history, a stroll through historic grounds, or a relaxed day with a cup of tea at the end.

Tip: If you're bringing a dog, check the estate's dog-friendly areas on its website before you set off.

Holkham Hall is an 18th-century Neo-Palladian country house, designed by William Kent for Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester. It is Grade I listed and still the ancestral home of the Coke family. Inside, you can see the Marble Hall, made of pink Derbyshire alabaster, and the Saloon with its red velvet walls. Guided cellar and attic tours take you behind the scenes.

The estate offers plenty beyond the house. There is a six-acre Walled Garden with Victorian greenhouses, a kitchen garden and a vineyard, plus the Holkham Stories exhibition on the estate's 400-year history. Outdoors, you can walk the parkland, home to a herd of fallow deer, or take a deer and wildlife safari on a tractor-trailer. The high ropes course has swinging bridges and two ziplines, and takes around an hour. There are cafés at the park and the beach, and Holkham Beach is part of the estate.

Tip: You can book the Hall, Walled Garden and Holkham Stories in advance, and the ropes course too. Check opening times first, as they vary.

Castle Rising is a ruined medieval castle in the Norfolk village of the same name, built soon after 1138 by William d'Aubigny II. It was designed as part fortress, part palatial hunting lodge, with a deer park behind it. Queen Isabella lived here after her fall from power in 1330, and entertained her son, Edward III, on several occasions.

The great keep is the main draw. It has extensive Romanesque detail, including pilaster buttresses and arcading, and historians Beric Morley and David Gurney consider it "one of the finest of all Norman keeps". Around it, three baileys are defended by large earthworks covering 5 hectares (12 acres), which archaeologists rate among the most impressive in Britain. The castle also sits beside a planned medieval town and its church of St Lawrence, so there is plenty to see for anyone interested in medieval history.

Oxburgh Hall is a moated medieval manor house near Swaffham, with Victorian Gothic interiors. It was built in the 1480s for the Bedingfeld family, who still live in private apartments there. You cross the moat to a tall brick gatehouse, then explore the hall, which has a priest hole and needlework hangings worked by Mary, Queen of Scots and Bess of Hardwick.

Outside, there is a Victorian garden with a kitchen garden and orchard, a French-style parterre, a wilderness area and My Lady's Wood. The parkland sits on the edge of the Norfolk Brecks, and there are woodland walks including a Woodland Explorer trail. The National Trust says families can build dens and hunt for secret doorways. The Servants' Hall tea-room is there for a break, and there is a shop and a second-hand bookshop.

Tip: Parking is free on site, and the hall is about 250 metres from the main car park along a flat gravel path.

Peckover House is a Georgian merchant's townhouse in Wisbech, built in 1722 and home to the Quaker Peckover banking family for 150 years. Inside are panelled rooms, Georgian fireplaces and ornate plasterwork, plus a library, a cabinet of curiosities and an exhibition on the family's banking business in the surviving part of the old Banking Hall.

Behind the house is a two-acre Victorian walled garden, known for its roses and an orangery with orange trees thought to be around 300 years old. There are also summer houses, herbaceous borders, a fernery, a croquet lawn and a 17th-century thatched Reed Barn, which houses a seasonal tea-room, a second-hand bookshop and plant sales. The garden is a good choice if you want to wander outdoors, while the house suits anyone interested in local history and how a wealthy Georgian family lived.

Tip: The house and garden keep different opening days, so check the National Trust page before you set off. Parking is in town, with Chapel Road the nearest car park.

Blickling Hall is a Grade I listed Jacobean country house near Aylsham in Norfolk, set in 5,000 acres of parkland in a loop of the River Bure. It was built after 1616 for Sir Henry Hobart on the ruins of a Tudor house once held by the Boleyn family, and it is now cared for by the National Trust.

Inside, the library holds one of the most historically significant collections of manuscripts and books in Britain, with an estimated 13,000 to 14,000 volumes. Outside, the grounds include a lake, a ha-ha and a Doric Temple. During the Second World War the house served as the Officers' Mess of nearby RAF Oulton, and the RAF Oulton Museum on site tells that story. A statue and portrait of Anne Boleyn carry an inscription saying she was born here.

Tip: Head for the library first if you only have limited time, as it is the house's most celebrated feature.

The Muckleburgh Military Collection sits on a former military camp at Weybourne on the North Norfolk coast, a site used for anti-aircraft training in the Second World War. Exhibits include working tanks, armoured cars, artillery, anti-aircraft guns, missiles and light weapons, plus displays on the Norfolk and Suffolk Yeomanry and on sea rescue and reconnaissance.

Most of the collection is indoors, with some vehicles and facilities outside. There is a café serving hot and cold meals, and an outdoor picnic and play area near it, which is handy with children. Visitors typically spend three to four hours here, depending on how thoroughly they look around. Dogs aren't allowed inside, but there are sheltered kennels with beds and water. The site has wheelchair access.

Tip: The collection closes for the season, so check its website for current opening before you travel. Parking on site is free for paying visitors.

Grime's Graves is a large Neolithic flint mining complex in Norfolk, 8 km north east of Brandon. Miners worked here from around 2600 to 2300 BC, digging shafts into the chalk to reach seams of flint, which was much in demand for making polished stone axes. Some of the largest shafts are more than 14 m deep and 12 m wide at the surface.

The ground is pockmarked with the filled-in shafts, and the scheduled monument covers some 37 hectares. Anglo-Saxons named it after their god Grim, and its purpose was only uncovered when Canon William Greenwell excavated a shaft in 1868 to 1870. The miners used red deer antler picks, and one shaft appears to have been turned into a shrine. The site is also a Site of Special Scientific Interest within the Breckland Special Area of Conservation, so it's a good stop for anyone curious about prehistory and open landscape.