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Strictly speaking, East Anglia is made up of just three counties - Suffolk, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire - which were settled by Angles from Holstein in the fifth century, though in more recent times it's come to be loosely applied to parts of Essex too. As a region it's renowned for its wide skies and flat landscapes, and of course such generalizations always contain more than a grain of truth - if you're looking for mountains, you've come to the wrong place. That said, East Anglia often fails to conform to its stereotype: parts of Suffolk are positively hilly, and its coastline can induce vertigo; the north Norfolk coast holds steep cliffs as well as wide sandy beaches; and even the pancake-flat fenlands are broken by wide, muddy rivers and hilly mounds, on one of which perches Ely 's magnificent cathedral. Indeed, the whole region is sprinkled with fine medieval churches, the legacy of the days when this was England's most progressive and prosperous region. Of all the region's counties, Suffolk is the most varied. Its undulating southern reaches, straddling the River Stour, are home to a string of picturesque, well-preserved little towns - Lavenham and Kersey are two excellent examples - which enjoyed immense prosperity during the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries, the heyday of the wool trade. Elsewhere, Bury St Edmunds can boast not just the ruins of its once-prestigious abbey, but also some fine Georgian architecture on its grid-plan streets. Even the much maligned county town of Ipswich has more to offer than it's generally given credit for. Nevertheless, for many visitors it's the north Suffolk coast that steals the local show. In Southwold , with its comely Georgian high street, Suffolk possesses a delightful seaside resort, elegant and relaxing in equal measure, while neighbouring Aldeburgh hosts one of the best music festivals in the country. Norfolk , as everyone knows thanks to Noel Coward, is very flat. It's also one of the most sparsely populated and tranquil counties in England, a remarkable turnaround from the days when it was an economic and political powerhouse - until, that is, the Industrial Revolution simply passed it by. Its capital, Norwich , is still East Anglia's largest city, renowned for its Norman cathedral and castle, and for its high-tech Sainsbury Centre, a provocative collection of twentieth-century art. The one part of Norfolk which has been well and truly discovered is the Broads , a unique landscape of reed-ridden waterways that has been over-exploited by farmers and boat-rental companies for the last twenty years. Too far from London to attract day-trippers, the Norfolk coast - with the exception of touristy Great Yarmouth and, to a lesser extent, the Victorian resort of Cromer - remains one of the most unspoilt in England, with Blakeney Point and the surrounding marshes among the country's top nature reserves. Meanwhile, sheltering inland, is an outstanding stately home - Blickling Hall - plus a couple more within easy striking distance of the steady resort of Hunstanton . Cambridge is, however, the one place in East Anglia everyone visits, largely on account of its world-renowned university, whose ancient colleges boast some of the finest medieval and early modern architecture in the country. The rest of Cambridgeshire is dominated by the landscape of the Fens , for centuries an inhospitable marshland, which was eventually drained to provide rich alluvial farming land. The one great highlight here is the cathedral town of Ely ,  © 2003 by Rough Guides Ltd. as trustee for its Authors. Published by Rough Guides. All rights reserved. Rough Guides name is a trademark of Rough Guides Ltd. Buy the book here!
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settled on one of the few areas of raised ground in this region and an easy and popular day-trip from Cambridge. Heading into the region from the south, almost inevitably takes you through Essex , though there's little here to divert you. Not properly part of East Anglia, but generally lumped together with the region, Essex's proximity to London has turned many places into soulless commuter towns with only the historic town of Colchester being really worth a detour.
Your Tips For East Anglia
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