Saunas, safaris and silence at Fritton Lake rewilding retreat

The scene is black, white, grey and silver: a film of ice on the lake, an unlit wooden sauna and the soft ticking of the stove as heat rises. Orion’s Belt is bright above ghostly silver birches and dark pines, and the vivid midwinter feeling — more like Canada or Finland — is oddly close to home, a few miles south-west of Great Yarmouth.

Fritton Lake itself, a deep, two-mile-long body of water carved from medieval peat-digging, sits hidden in sandy, hilly heathland and is unlike the nearby Broads. Over the past five years the lake and its surrounds have been reshaped by a rewilding programme. Landowner Hugh Somerleyton, co-founder of WildEast, has pledged Fritton as his 25% rewilding contribution while farming the remainder of his 2,020-hectare estate regeneratively.

fritton lake, rewilding, wildeast, hugh somerleyton, sauna, great yarmouth, regenerative farming, peat digging, heathland, broads