Blickling Estate in Norfolk is a dog friendly walk

The historic park surrounding the beautiful gardens and the magnificent Jacobean Blickling mansion is a breathtaking sight, and it makes for an enjoyable dog hike in Norfolk.  

Dogs are not permitted in the house or gardens, but the park offers more than 4,600 acres of land to explore, and there are four walks suggested by the National Trust, ranging from 2.9 to 8 kilometres. 

Distance	Total Time	Difficulty
7.49 km	02:12	Easy

As we often do, we mixed up a couple of trails, walking first by the house and the lakeshore before heading to the mausoleum trail and back to the car park.

Unlike other National Trust sites, such as the Blenheim Palace, for example, there is no admission fee at the Blickling Estate if you want to walk in the park, and the autumn colours are gorgeous there, making it really worth the walk.

There is a big car park and an overflow car park on the site – you will not be left without a parking space. The parking costs £5 for the day. There is a café, information centre, toilets and an area with picnic tables at the entrance. After you get to the estate, there is the Buckinghamshire Arms pub and more options for food and drinks.

An irritating point was that we could not find one dog waste bin in the whole walk, only at the car park and at the entrance. It didn’t take anything away from the walk, however, as our girls loved it. It is just something to keep in mind.

Don’t forget to check the post notes at the bottom of the page, with maps, a detailed table about the hike and links to everything mentioned in the post.

The Hike

For a slight change, we started this hike at the visitor centre by the entrance and followed the signposts to the House, passing by the Buckinghamshire Arms pub and stopping to admire the mansion view. The postcode to the estate is NR11 6NF.

The trail is well marked with signposts at first and waymarks all through the walk. We started following the blue waymarks.

The view from the gates of the mansion is fantastic and well worth the minor detour.

From there, we saw the sign to Lake Walk and kept following the blue waymark on the path parallel to the gardens, passing by fields with grazing sheep.

This section is quite pretty and was a relaxing walk. The autumn colours were really popping out at this time of the year. The girls were on top form, meeting loads of other four-legged friends on the way.

We then got to the lake section, and as per usual, we made a little detour turning to the right, following the orange waymark and getting a bit deeper into the woods. 

To be honest, I think I would keep following the blue path by the lake instead, as there isn’t much to see on that side of the woods. The orange path in this section is just running parallel to the blue path, but is a little more into the woods.

We kept walking by the side until we got to the top of the lake, where loads of people were fishing. The fresh fish smell was making the girls crazy :). No treats could distract them from trying to sniff out where these wonderful smells were coming from.

After passing the top of the lake, we diverged from the path marked with a blue waymark that guides a circular walk to the other side of the lake and started following the orange route instead.

We walked past the mausoleum, which is a Grade II listed tomb. It was made from Portland stone blocks which were originally white and have since weathered to varying shades of grey. If your dog is good with recall, the field around the mausoleum is a great place to let them run free for a while. 

We then kept following the trail, now walking on a reddish ground path, crossing cultivated fields until we passed the Blickling Tower – an 18^th century tower, formerly the Earl of Buckinghamshire’s race stand but now a holiday accommodation for rent. We’ve checked and unfortunately it doesn’t welcome dogs. 

After this point, we continued following the orange waymarks taking us through more woods and plantations and back to the overflow car park, where we finished the trail.

Overall it was a great walk with plenty to see, and the girls loved it. Both Gambá and Pequi were exhausted by the end and slept all the way back home.

As mentioned earlier, the only criticism is that there are no waste bins on this trail.

Cheers,

Ademar