Culture in Norwich: Norwich Free Walking Tours
Culture in Norwich: Norwich Free Walking Tours
It’s safe to say that one of the best ways to get to know Norwich- whether you’re a first-time visitor or longstanding Norwich resident- is through a walking tour. Every corner unravels untold stories, secrets and centuries of history.
And one of the city’s newest is Norwich Free Walking Tours.
After nine months travelling the world, local Tom Thornhill came home to Norwich and saw it through new eyes. Here, the founder of Norwich Free Walking Tours shares his version of our fine city.
Norwich Free Walking Tours are inspired by founder Tom’s worldwide travels
Starting a Free Walking Tour in the City of Stories
Returning to Norwich
I remember driving back into Norwich after nine months on the road. Louise (my partner) and I were rolling up Kett’s Hill in our Ford Ka with a boot full of clothes that weren’t the same clothes we’d left home with last summer. We parked at the top, near Mousehold Heath’s viewpoint where the whole city sits below you, green and flint-grey, all church towers and old roofs, and a neighbour walked past with her dog.
“Are you back?” she said. Then, before I could answer, “Is this the first time you’re actually back back?”
That was the moment it hit me. We weren’t just back. We were back back. I said yes to both, slowly pulling bags out of the boot.
I’ve lived in Norwich most of my adult life, Louise all of hers, and it felt like we hadn’t quite processed what we were coming back to. We’d been across Europe in the van, through jungles and mega-cities in Japan, China, Vietnam and Thailand, eating more cheap rice than is good for a person, and climbed mountains and surfed beaches in Australia and New Zealand. And here we were, finally back in Norwich.
What hit me wasn’t the view, or the English countryside, or the smell of a Greggs sausage roll, or the cold breeze that air-conditions the UK all year round. It was how this place suddenly felt different from what I’d remembered. Long way to go to find out that the home you miss isn’t quite the home you remember. How quiet it was. How old it felt. How unusual to live somewhere where, the second you leave the house, you’ll bump into someone you know from some other corner of your life.
When you’re away, you picture the home you’re coming back to as somewhere safe and familiar, full of friends and family. That wasn’t quite the feeling I had at the top of Mousehold. Maybe we were only back, not yet back back, picking up where we’d left off. And that’s the bit that excited me. I could look at this familiar city with new eyes and build a new connection to the place that had been home until last summer.
The Inspiration: Europe’s Free Walking Tours
One thing about travelling is you don’t always remember the places; you remember the connection you felt to them, and the people who showed them to you. The activity that really embodied this for us, in nearly every city we landed in, was the free walking tour. Some were great, some were forgettable, and one in Ljubljana, Slovenia, the first one we took, changed everything.
Our guide there did that thing a really good guide does. She walked us round the old town- okay, but then she sat with us at the end and rewrote our itinerary for the rest of Slovenia. Where to go. Where to eat. The best stories. Where to drink coffee like a Slovenian. What to skip.
We ended up having an authentically Slovenian stay because a local had quietly handed us her map of what she loved about the place. More than that, it felt like we had a friend from that city. What stuck with me afterwards was how open and generous she’d been.
That night, Louise asked the question that started everything, why have we never thought of doing one of these in Norwich, even as locals who live here?
After a bit of digging, I found Norwich already has some great tours, but none of them in the same style as we’d experienced in Slovenia. So, a few drinks deep on New Year’s Eve, scribbling resolutions, I decided to bring the idea home.
It’s safe to say they’re accessible for everyone, including your furry friends!
Why We Do It the Way We Do
As a former history student at UEA, I’d been giving informal tours to friends for years, whenever they ventured this far east. So, the foundations were already there.
If you’ve never been to Norwich before, the tour I run is one of the simplest ways to get a feel for the city through my (a local’s) eyes. The history, the culture, the best way to make the most of your visit. The same way the guide in Slovenia let us feel her city. That’s what I want visitors to feel about Norwich– it feels like a conversation.
There’s plenty of history on the tour, but I never lead with dates. What I care about is whose story I’m telling. Norwich has been lived in by ordinary, opinionated, occasionally ridiculous people for the best part of a millennium, and most of the tour is about them and the places they left behind. Earlier this year, The Sunday Times named Norwich the best place to live in the UK, citing its “historic character” and “urban buzz”. These are the two things the tour walks you straight through.
Plus, what Louise and I actually went home thinking about: the coffee I drink, the places I’d take you to eat if you were a friend visiting, that shop in the Lanes you’d walk past if you didn’t know it was there. I point these out as we go, partly because every visitor asks, and partly because the whole point of a free walking tour is that a local hands you the city the way they actually live in it.
Norwich is full of small businesses worth championing. I love the debate locals on the tour bring with them, sharing their own favourites and the places they’re still discovering after decades of living here.
I also love the free tour model because it makes the tour so accessible for everyone, regardless of price. There’s nothing to pay upfront and you genuinely pay what you think it was worth.
Most days, you’ll start off meeting me at The Forum at 11am. 2 hours later, you’ve got a head full of stories, somewhere to go for coffee, a market stall for lunch, and a route through the Lanes you’ll come back to in the evening. And you won’t need to have booked a thing.
A Day in the City of Stories
If a friend showed up tomorrow with a single day in Norwich, here’s what I’d do with them.
Firstly, coffee at Strangers on Pottergate because it sets the bar for the day. Then to Norwich Cathedral while the light is still soft- catch one of their free tours if you can. The Close at 10 o’clock on a weekday is one of the quietest, most beautiful places and more people should talk about it.
Lunch from Norwich Market: The Bodega for sandwiches, Lucy’s Chips for the best fish and chips you’ll get outside of the coast. Take them up the steps and eat them near City Hall.
Afternoon: Norwich Castle Keep. Then wander down Elm Hill towards Tombland and Fye Bridge, picking up an ice cream at Café Gelato on the way. By five, you can sit by the river with a pint at the Red Lion or The Ribs of Beef and watch the city slow down as paddleboarders pass by.
That’s not a normal tour itinerary; it’s a normal Saturday with someone I like.
I think about that moment on Kett’s Hill a lot. Nine months of looking at other people’s cities, and the one I came home to was the one I’d been walking past for thirty-odd years without really paying attention to. The tour I run now is just Louise’s Ljubljana question answered. A local handing you the day. That’s the Norwich I want you to meet.
Norwich Free Walking Tours take place daily- pay what you think the tour was worth at the end. You can book your space via their website.
