Search for a touring site near Great Yarmouth and you get two kinds of result. Large holiday parks on the seafront strip with entertainment complexes and a lot of static caravans, and a handful of smaller touring sites scattered inland.
We are the second kind, and we are not in Great Yarmouth at all. Priory Farm is at St Olaves, on the A143, about twenty minutes out. This is an honest account of what that distance costs you and what it buys.
What you give up
Let us do this first, because it is short.
You cannot walk to the seafront. You cannot walk to the Pleasure Beach, the Golden Mile or the racecourse. If what you want is to park the van and be among it on foot, a seafront park is the right answer and you should book one.
You also give up facilities at scale. There is one shower and one toilet per gender here. The block was built in 2024 and it is spotless, but it is one of each. No pool, no clubhouse, no entertainment.
What you get
Space, in numbers
Eighteen touring pitches. Every pitch is hardstanding and every pitch is 8 metres by 10 metres.
That is the figure worth comparing, because every site in the country describes its pitches as spacious and almost none of them tell you the dimensions. Eight by ten takes a large caravan and a full awning, or a seven metre motorhome with room to open the door and still have grass to stand on. Our most repeated review comment is about pitch size.
Adults only, which is the real difference
We are adults only, 18 and over, all year round. The site shares a boundary with a working farm and an animal sanctuary, which is the reason.
In August and at half term, that is not a small detail. It is the entire difference between the two kinds of site above.
The price, with nothing bolted on
From £24 a night low season, £32 high season, for a hardstanding pitch with 10 amp electric hook-up, fresh water, waste disposal and use of the facilities.
Then the things other sites charge for and we do not:
- No booking fee
- No charge for an awning, a porch or a gazebo
- No charge for an extra car
- No bank holiday supplement
- Up to two dogs per pitch at no extra cost
- Free cancellation up to 28 days before arrival
Minimum stay is one night, two over bank holidays. A good many sites in this area sell two-night blocks only, and three or four-night minimums over bank holidays are common. If you want a Tuesday, you can have a Tuesday.
Being inside the national park rather than near it
St Olaves is inside the Broads National Park boundary. Not near it, not five minutes from it. In it.
The boundary is a narrow strip that follows the rivers, which is why this matters: a lot of sites that advertise themselves as Broads sites are outside it. The River Waveney is a two minute walk from the gate, and St Olaves Bridge is the first bridging point on the Waveney above Great Yarmouth. The Broads Authority’s own navigation notes record 24-hour moorings with electric charging points at St Olaves, just before the bridge.
What is actually within reach
Approximate drive times from the gate. Treat them as approximate, because road geography on the Broads does not always do what the map suggests.
| Place | Roughly | Why bother |
|---|---|---|
| Great Yarmouth | 20 minutes | Seafront, racecourse, the Victorian heritage quarter |
| Beccles | 15 minutes | The nearest proper town. Quay, market, decent pubs |
| Lowestoft | 22 minutes | Marina Theatre, and the most easterly point in Britain |
| Breydon Water | 10 minutes | Norfolk’s best estuarine wader site. Autumn passage from September |
| Waveney River Centre | 10 minutes | Marina, pub, boat hire |
| Fritton Lake | 10 minutes | Walks and water |
| Somerleyton Hall | 12 minutes | The nearest big estate and gardens |
| Carlton Marshes | 20 minutes | Suffolk Wildlife Trust reserve on the Waveney |
And one correction worth making, because our own older material got it wrong: Burgh Castle Roman fort is a drive, not a walk. It is on the other side of the river. Worth going, not worth setting off on foot for.
The Angles Way long distance footpath runs past the site, which means the dog gets walked without the car moving. We have four marked routes from the gate with PDF maps on the walks page.
Haddiscoe station is a thirty minute walk, on the line into Norwich and down to Lowestoft. Useful if you want a day out without driving, and genuinely useful if the day out involves a pub.
For motorhomes specifically
The internal lanes are wide and were built that way rather than adapted. There is no security barrier, so no height bar and nothing to reverse away from late at night. The site is not permanently manned and you do not check in on arrival, you drive to your allocated pitch.
The service point has a drive-over drain for grey waste, which is the detail most sites never publish. If your van has a grey waste valve, you pull up over it and pull the valve. Chemical disposal and fresh water are at the same central point.
There is more detail in eight things worth checking before you book a motorhome pitch.
Who this is not for
Families, because we cannot take you. Anyone who wants to walk to the seafront. Anyone who needs reliable mobile signal, because ours is poor and there is no WiFi, and that is the most repeated complaint in our reviews. Anyone who wants a big facilities block.
If none of that is you, twenty minutes inland is the better address.
Booking
Adults only, hardstanding, 10A, from £24 a night. One night if that is all you want, no booking fee, free cancellation to 28 days.
Check availability and book, or ring us on 01493 764400. Prices are on the pitches and prices page, and the practical detail is on the site information page.