Joy was tinged with alarm in my home county of Norfolk last week as the Princess of Wales’s health-update video hit the world’s screens.
The former because we’re delighted to hear she’s on the mend. The latter because the messaging was wrapped in what some see as a glossy tourism promotion film, produced by Will Warr, a wedding videographer from London.
Norfolkers, like everyone else, like to moan about tourists — or “visters” as they’re called in these parts — and many say the film really doesn’t help.
The video was filmed by videographer Will Warr near the Wales’s family home in Norfolk
Specifically there is concern that Kate’s feelgood hit of the summer will help put a county that has yet to replace the road signs removed in 1940 in order to thwart Nazi paratroopers, too firmly in the spotlight.
There are fears of overtourism, of an invasion of preening influencers who will lurk in coastal woodlands leaning wistfully against trees. It’s all part of a plan, mutter some. The opening of an Airbnb in the old head gardener’s house on the Sandringham Estate was the start. Then came the opening of a 33-mile section of King Charles III England Coast Path footpath in May. Now this video. They’re trying to rebrand our marshy coast, with its charming caravan parks and Sunday preloved mobility scooter markets, into some glitzy Côte de Hunstanton.
The old head gardener’s house on the Sandringham Estate
AIRBNB
But Kate’s film is as vague as the wartime authorities about exact locations. With her husband and three children, George, Charlotte and Louis, she wanders through a collage of forest, field and unnamed beach. Despite being filmed in August, when there are more “visters” than muntjacs on the road, we see no other people. It’s as though the film has been shot in her own private kingdom. Which, I suppose, it has.
Along with the rest of the world, those of us in the pubs of King’s Lynn with nothing better to do have been trying to identify exactly where the film was shot. And just like those BBC wildlife documentaries that look as though they’ve been filmed in the hardest-to-reach locations but turn out to have been shot from the observation deck next to the car park, it seems the royals didn’t move far off the A149 for this three-minute wonder.
Could this video rebrand the area into a glitzy Côte de Hunstanton?
The first sequence — a contemplative close up of broadleaf and fern reminiscent of Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line — was shot, say locals, on the family estate at Anmer Hall, three miles east from Sandringham. The next bit sweeps us 19 miles east to the Earl of Leicester’s seaside estate at Holkham. The exact spot where we see the family strolling through a Blair Witch Project-style pine forest lies about a mile west of the public car park along the track leading to the George Washington bird hide. Few tourists make it this far, and because there’s no public vehicle access, only the Earl and his mates can drive there.
The same track is the one upon which the family are seen walking, in a loving tribute to Victor Fleming’s 1939 hit The Wizard of Oz.
Then there’s that handsome oak that steals a picnic scene, an obvious homage to Jean Renoir’s 1936 classic film Partie de Campagne. The location though, has been a matter of debate (there are a lot of handsome oaks in the county) but the most likely guess is that it’s back at Kate and William’s family home at Anmer Hall.
There’s a similar lack of consensus over the soft focus sequence of the family capering in the long grass of a wildflower meadow. Some of the old estates of west Norfolk have become as enthusiastic about rewilding as they once were about pheasant shooting, but Sandringham isn’t one of them.
This particular shoot could have taken place at Wild Massingham but the most likely suspect is Wild Ken Hill, which all but borders the royal estate, and has returned 40 per cent of its 4,000 acres to nature. The stubble field where the family is seen jumping on bales stumped me but I’m told, with some certainty, that it’s on the hill at Flitcham, just south of Anmer.
The dunes of Holkham West and the sands close by are featured in the video
ALAMY
The dunes and the beach are easier to identify. As the film unfolds we see the family come out of the woods — surely a metaphor? — and into the sunshine in the dunes of Holkham West and on the sands close by. If you want to visit the location, it’s probably better to park at Burnham Overy Staithe and follow the Norfolk Coast Path along the floodbank walk to the beach via Gun Hill.
I can’t claim to have been an influence on this happy scene, but the picture we used to illustrate Holkham in The Times And Sunday Times 2024 Best UK Beaches guide shows the exact spot. Just saying.
Where are your favourite places in Norfolk? Let us know in the comments below
