Norfolk

Norfolk is a large county in the East Anglia region of eastern England. The county town is Norwich and other major towns include the ports of Great Yarmouth and Kings Lynn, and the seaside resorts of Cromer, Sheringham and Hunstanton. Norfolk has land borders with Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk.

Norfolk is renowned for its flatness, Noel Coward for example declaring emphatically of the county, "Very flat, Norfolk". Although it is not quite as low lying as Cambridgeshire, large areas of Norfolk would be threatened by a rise in sea level.

Long stretches of the Norfolk coast is comparatively unspoiled, there are several important nature reserves, and extensive areas of saltmarsh and sand dunes. The Norfolk Broads are an area of ancient flooded peat-diggings in the county, connected by rivers, that are a popular holiday destination for boating holidays, and were recently declared a National Park. Breckland, in the south of the county around Thetford, is a thinly-populated area of poor, sandy soil, heathland and pine plantations; much of it is given over to air bases and a battle training area for the British Army.

Norfolk is quite sparsely inhabited by British standards (by contrast with the Middle Ages, when it was one of the richest and most densely-populated areas of England), and important industries include agriculture and tourism.