A mammoth adventure along the North Norfolk coast

Peering down from the cliffs onto busy West Runton beach, it was hard to picture this land in the hands – or should that be at the feet – of now-extinct creatures such as giant deer and mammoths, let alone rhinos, hyenas and our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Yet evidence of this is everywhere in Norfolk, and the endless natural history artefacts found here have cemented the area’s reputation as one of the UK’s leading destinations for geology, archaeology and palaeontology enthusiasts.

“As well as the largest and oldest mammoth ever found in Britain, Norfolk has the oldest human footprints outside of Africa,” according to David Waterhouse, senior natural history curator at Norfolk Museum Services. "And it’s the only county in the UK to have evidence of four different species of human.”

Thankfully, you don’t need to be an expert to get a flavour of what life was like here 850,000 years ago – with the help of a free app, it’s easier than ever to discover it for yourself.

The DHC Explorer Augmented Reality (AR) app covers the coastal Discovery Trail, which snakes some 22 miles from Weybourne to Cart Gap. The trail itself is divided into 10 manageable walking routes, much of which is clifftop, with segments along the beach and occasional detours inland.  

The app brings all of this to life with a map, tide times (essential for some of the beach sections), oodles of information, games for younger ones (you can virtually collect mammoth bones as you go), and a collection of AR characters. Along the way, there are 11 Discovery Points – monolith-like info boards – that offer a window into the world of the Hominin family, who share facts about different locations through the app.

Although each section boasts something special, I was set on exploring the stretch from West Runton to East Runton.

It was here, 30 years ago, that the UK’s largest and most intact skeleton of a steppe mammoth was found by chance. A couple walking along the beach spied what looked like a bone sticking out of the unmissable chocolate layer at the bottom of the cliffs known as the West Runton Freshwater Bed. This dark deposit, made up of organic matter-rich mud that's still visible today, was left behind by an estuary when the landscape looked unimaginably different. It’s thought that the unfortunate mammoth, whose skeleton was eventually carefully excavated, likely perished after becoming stuck in the river more than 600,000 years ago, only to be rediscovered in 1990.

Down on West Runton beach, standing close to the base of the cliffs, I dove into the app to see what more it had to tell me. The first thing that caught my eye was the 360 degree AR function next to my location on the route map. When pressed, it transported me to the wide, open grassy landscape of Doggerland – the landmass that once connected Britain and Northern Europe – where the doomed mammoth would have lived.

A quick tap projected a giant deer onto the sand in front me – one of the characters in the AR collection – before I swapped him out for a rhino, which seemed just as incongruous against the open expanse of the North Sea.

I decided to turn my attention to fossil hunting – and I certainly wasn’t alone. Before joining the many welly-clad fossil hunters bent double over rock pools, I opened the app’s fossil finder to get an idea of what I was looking for. It details everything from the most common to rare finds, such as rhino teeth, coprolite (fossilised hyena poo sometimes found here) and even huge mammoth molars. Although none of these revealed themselves to my untrained eyes, I did bag a few belemnites, the amber-hued, bullet-shaped fossils of an extinct relative of the cuttlefish, which were in abundance by the water’s edge.

Waterhouse later told me that unlike much of the UK, the cliffs along this coast are soft owing to the glacial deposits that formed them. While this poses a very real threat to coastal communities and farmland, he explained that “the erosion is responsible for a series of outstanding archaeological and palaeontological discoveries”.

He added: “The mix of geology layered under foot means that there are marine rocks recording what life was like some 90 million years ago when the dinosaurs were on land further west, as well as younger Ice Age sediments containing a fascinating mix of sub-fossils such as mammoths, giant deer, bison, rhino, whales, walrus and evidence of early humans.”

Continuing along the demerara-like sand, East Runton soon came into view. It may be a short walk between the two slipways but with the sun casting long, low shadows from the cliffs on one side, the vast and open sea on the other, and all the natural history squeezed between them, I suddenly realised I’d spent more time than intended here.

Shortly after, while warming up with a meal in the cosy Banningham Crown just south of Cromer, I felt that overwhelming sense of fulfilment you get from a truly enjoyable day out. Taking time to follow just one section of the Discovery Trail with all of its immersive experiences had given a beautiful beach walk a whole new dimension. Just goes to show that not all screen time is bad.

DHC Explorer Augmented Reality (AR) app is available on iOS and Android. For more on the area, see Visit North Norfolk’s website.

Most of the West Runton Mammoth’s remains are preserved at the Norfolk Collections Centre, Gressenhall. Organised tours take you up close to the skeleton, but booking is essential. 

There’s also a dedicated display at Cromer Museum close to West Runton, where you can see some of the large leg bones, and at Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery, where the mammoth's huge vertebra and jawbone are displayed.

England is currently on national lockdown until 2 December, the museums and galleries mentioned will be closed until then.