Good public transport is essential to pubs, and CAMRA campaigns for a affordable and efficient public transport system.
The city area of our branch is well-served by numerous buses, which run well into the evening, but the county often isn’t, unfortunately, with buses either non-existent or infrequent.
Buses are mostly run by either Sanders, First Bus or Konnect, with trains run by Greater Anglia connecting Norwich with the north coast at Cromer and Sheringham, via North Walsham, and Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft via Brundall and Reedham, as well as of course London, Cambridge, Ipswich and the Midlands and North West directly.
When using public transport to visit pubs, it’s always good to know when the bus you want to catch will arrive, as they often don’t run to timetable, and valuable drinking time can be lost turning up early at the stop to make sure you don’t miss the bus! There’s a very useful site called BusTimes.org, which shows the current (to within about a minute) location of all bus services across the country on a map.
Other journey planning websites and apps are available from First Bus, Traveline, and Travel Norfolk.
Pubs by Bus
If you’d like to get out of the city and visit a few pubs by bus, this is a (short at the moment, hopefully to be expanded) list iof possible routes.
The Norwich – Cromer – Sheringham route, operated by Sanders, is fairly frequent until about 5pm, but there is a late bus back to the city around 9pm, and using the Explorer ticket (£12 as at Feb 2025) you can hop on and off all day. The first pub stop out of the city is the Plough, at Marsham, then there are several pubs in Aylsham, including the Porters Arms micropub, sister to the Norwich Malt & Mardle, the New Inn at Roughton, and several pubs in each of East Runton, Cromer (including previous Pub of the Year the Red Lion Hotel and Poppyland Brewery’s tap), the Village Inn at West Runton, and Sheringham.
Overlapping the last route is the Sanders CoastHopper route, from Cromer to Wells-next-the-Sea, which runs every hour in the winter and every half hour in the summer, although often not very close to the timetable, as there are often traffic jams through the small villages such as Cley! Pubs on the route not already mentioned above are the Ship at Weybourne, Dun Cow at Salthouse (note that the bus stop is well before the pub, when coming from Sheringham!), the George and Three Swallows at Cley, the Anchor at Morston, several pubs in Blakeney and Wells itself, and the Red Lion at Stiffkey (pronounced as written – not ‘Stookey’!).
As a diversion from this route, ask the bus driver to drop you at Wiveton Hall, between Cley and Blakeney, and walk down to Wiveton Bell, then across the Glaven Valley to the Three Swallows and back to Cley. Or you can use the Coastal Path to walk between pubs!