Yahoo News Hotel Hit Squad: A wholesome family holiday in a Norfolk windmill put the wind in all our sails
You know what the world really needs right now? More journalists doling out unsolicited and under-researched parenting advice. So here goes. The orthodoxy states that children shouldn’t watch any television before the age of two. And when I say orthodoxy, I mean of course doctors, psychologists, people with PhDs and so on – individuals whose expertise stretches beyond merely "having miraculously survived eight years of parenthood without either children or parents being committed to an institution".
Nonetheless, they are all, categorically, WRONG. Babies can’t walk, talk or read. They can’t grip a pencil or operate a bicycle. They are nearly two decades away from being allowed to drink a glass of wine. With no televisions, how on earth are the poor wee things supposed to entertain themselves?
At the age of six, however, when they can finally be chucked into the garden and reasonably expected to keep themselves happy, the official guidelines allow them two full hours of television viewing per day. What madness is this? These days, with a five-year-old and an eight-year-old, I am tyrannical about limiting their viewing habits. But back when they were babies, we spent countless happy and guilt-free hours slumped in front of CBeebies. My point? All this helps explain why I was so excited to visit Cley Windmill.
To the more cultured among you, Cley Windmill is a 19th-century mill on the edge of protected reed beds and salt marshes in one of north Norfolk’s most chichi villages. To the less culturally erudite, it is the former home of upper-class crooner James Blunt. To my family and I, it is one of the locations where the CBeebies show Grandpa in my Pocket was filmed.
It has also just opened a new room, called the Old Cart Shed. One of three self-contained rooms carved out of the windmill’s outbuildings, it is something of a Tardis. From the outside, it looks unpromisingly like, well… a shed. Step inside, however, and there are vaulted ceilings, an oak four-poster bed, a wood burner, a bijou kitchenette, a shower room, a stack of Tintin books and a snug mezzanine level that is perfect for small children sleeping on airbeds.
Ours spent the next 24 hours careering about like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, wielding croquet mallets in the pretty walled garden and climbing the mill’s vertiginous staircase to stand on its balcony and take in the magical views across its sails.
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This stretch of Norfolk’s coast is essentially nature’s theme park. Within the hotel’s grounds, there is a semi-secret entrance on to the short footpath that leads to Cley’s shingle beach. It is less than a 10-minute drive to Morston village, where boats depart to take daytrippers to see the seals, or to Wiveton Hall where the posh people eat pretty cakes, pick their own berries and pretend not to gawp at Desmond MacCarthy (owner of both the hall and a pair of eyebrows so magnificent they have their own BBC Two show called Normal for Norfolk).
The Windmill also has a myriad of attractions for adults, including a lawn fringed with reeds and dotted with sun loungers on which you can sip a locally made gin and tonic, or an Adnams champagne.
Cley village has a great bookshop, a pottery with its own studio and gallery, a fantastic deli and a smokehouse where – should you too be staying in the Old Cart Shed – you could order a fresh dressed Cromer crab and take it back to your own kitchenette and table.
We decided to take the hotel up on its offer of a 'simple' cheese board, which turned out to be positively Dionysian. There was enough cheese to feed the gods, plus grapes, olives, charcuterie, sun-blanched tomatoes, sourdough, you name it.
Otherwise, three-course set suppers are served in the Mill’s own circular dining room for £32.50, with children’s meals made on request. Hot breakfasts are served here, too, and are the best I have eaten in my calorific career as a hotel columnist: light and lemony kedgeree with local fish, and a full English fit for a king, all served by the most wonderful local woman who manages to squeeze the words 'my love' into every single sentence she utters.
Granted, the décor in the dining room is a little olde worlde, while some guests will find the proliferation of spotlights in the Cart Shed a little overzealous. But the place is completely unique, quintessentially British and casts a spell over young and old alike.
Indeed, the five-year-old believes the place was 'better even than Butlins'. And we barely turned on the television.
A family of four can stay in the Old Cart Shed from £325 per night (including breakfast) or in the main mill from £259 per night.
Read the full hotel review: Cley Windmill
