Day trips from Norwich?

Dawn, I went to school about 15 miles from Norwich and I'm very fond of the city and indeed the whole county of Norfolk. There are hundreds and hundreds of old churches, many dating from the middle ages when Norfolk was the centre of the wool trade and lots of rich wool merchants realised that by funding the construction of large churches they could simultaneously save their souls and create handy warehousing. Worstead is a good example of that - small village, huge church. Try www.norfolkchurches.co.uk. I am on a train, about to leave London. I will try to reply again later, but while I still have a signal I will just copy and paste a reply I wrote in another thread last month: In just under 2 hours you could be in Norwich, travelling from Liverpool Street station. In the 11th century it was the second biggest city in England, after London. It has a Norman cathedral (completed around 1140), a Norman castle (completed 1121), and a lovely old town area with a lot of medieval buildings. There is a huge market which has been on its current site for around 900 years (it was moved from its previous site where it had been since Saxon times when the Normans started building the castle) and the city is on the River Wensum, which connects it to the Norfolk Broads (flooded medieval peat diggings which form 300 square kilometres of lakes known as 'Broads'). There are scheduled boat trips or self-drive day boats available from Norwich.
The thing that everyone remembers about Norwich is that is has a church for every week of the year and a pub for every day of the year. That may be a popular myth, but it's not far short of the truth.

Easy train to Colchester - Roman City walls, castle, seem to remember a clock museum. Check out the tourist information for Colchester.
Also nearby John Constable lived and worked. There is a National Trust property where you can see the original sites where he painted many of his famous paintings, Willy Lotts cottage, Dedham Mill etc, the Haywain - apologies if the spelling is a bit off.

I have enjoyed touring several National Trust properties in Norfolk, including Blickling Hall, Oxburgh Hall, and Felbrigg. Sandringham, the Queen's country retreat estate, is also nearby and is very interesting. Check the National Trust website and the Sandringham estate website for visiting times.

Thank you all for your help! We have never traveled to England and have no clue about where to go apart from our 3 days in London. I hear the weather has been unusually chilly for spring and coming from the Washington, DC area (where it is already near 80 F.) we are quite spoiled by the heat. Please keep those ideas coming...

OK, castles first. You will need to check the websites for these to see if they are the kind of castle you have in mind. There are lots of Norman keeps and mounds in Norfolk, mostly ruins but with a relatively small number of them being reasonably well preserved (including Norwich Castle, which you must visit). There is a list at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Castles_in_Norfolk but I would particularly mention Castle Rising and Caister Castle (which also has a little motor museum). Stately homes. D.D. has already mentioned Sandringham, which is one of the Queen's many homes. It's open daily until November, except Saturday 27th July to Friday 2nd August. It is over on the western side of Norfolk, a fair drive from Norwich but worth the trip. It's about 12 years since I was there, and I recall it being a good day out. I especially enjoyed the museum which displays lots of the gifts given to the royal family during state visits abroad. D.D. also mentioned Blickling Hall. It's a very attractive 16th century manor house and gardens, no distance from Norwich at all. It's near Aylsham, where it's worth stopping (market days are Monday and Friday). I would go just to visit the Black Sheep shop (http://www.blacksheep.ltd.uk/) which sells handmade knitwear from sheep raised locally (including a herd of black sheep at Blickling). Then there is Holkham Hall, up near the north coast of Norfolk - http://www.holkham.co.uk/ . Extremely grand, well worth a visit, just take a look at the website. It's location means you can combine it with some other things on the same day, perhaps. More to follow...

What about The Broads? The big museuma at Stalham and the little private one with the punts and huge goose guns. Norfolk Archaeology and Museums Service has enough places scattered around to keep you busy for a week.

The Broads. Flooded medieval peat diggings - doesn't sound very exciting, does it? In fact it's great - 300 square kilometres of lakes and waterways, 200 square kilometres of them navigable. I learned to sail here, and when I was 13 my father bought a little 13 foot dinghy with a gaff rig that we kept at Barton Broad. I used to cycle there from our house and take the boat out on my own or with friends from school, learning the perils of a lee shore the hard way. The best way to appreciate the Broads is from the water. Ed mentioned the Museum of the Broads - http://www.museumofthebroads.org.uk/ - which I see has a little steam launch that takes visitors out on the water. Alternatively, there are a number of boat yards where you can hire day cruisers or go on scheduled cruises. I'd do that from the Wroxham/Hoveton area. See here - http://www.enjoythebroads.com/things-to-do/broads-tours-day-boat-hire For other ideas see the main Broads website - http://www.norfolkbroads.com/

And finally, the coast. If you look at a map, the most interesting part is from Hunstanton in the west to Cromer in the east, but I only know the section from Blakeney to Cromer. Blakeney and Cley (rhymes with spy, not clay). This area is a national nature reserve, with salt marshes and the 4 mile long Blakeney Spit. You can do boat trips, with a good chance of seeing a large grey seal colony. The villages are very popular in the summer, and in fact the whole coast becomes London-on-Sea due to the many people from the capital who own second homes here. In spite of that, it's a wild, windswept and glorious place and worth a day of your time. See here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blakeney_Point Cromer and Sherringham are traditional English seaside resorts (pier, ice cream, fish and chips, pubs). At one time Cromer was known as Little Leicester in the summer because trainloads of factory workers from that city would descend on the place for daytrips or a week's holiday. They are both still popular, Sherringham having a reputation for being slightly more 'genteel', but it also has the North Norfolk Steam Railway, which is definitely worth a visit. Cromer is famous for crabs, which are caught here and sold from stalls, but widely available in cafes and pub lunches. See here - http://www.visitnorthnorfolk.com/places/coast.aspx

I loved the area around Castle Acre - it was just beautiful.