A Sunday in Norfolk can be two good things at once: a proper walk with the wind off the fields and mud on your boots, and a long lunch you think about for the last two miles. Getting both right is mostly a matter of order. Choose the roast first, then build the walk around it, and the final stretch becomes downhill, sheltered and pointed straight at a table you have already booked.

Here is how to put a pub walk together without overthinking it, plus a handful of Norfolk routes that finish well.

Start with the roast, then work backwards

Most people plan the walk and then hunt for somewhere to eat. Reverse it. Find the pub first, check that it serves Sunday lunch, and only then open the map and draw a circle around it.

The circle should be about two to four miles across. That is a comfortable morning for most people: long enough to earn the Yorkshire puddings, short enough that nobody is limping by the time the plates land. If you have children or a dog in the party, err on the smaller side. A flat four miles on the coast path takes far less out of you than four miles of Norfolk arable field edges, which are heavier going than they look.

Two phone calls or a quick look at a website will tell you what you need: whether the kitchen serves all afternoon or stops at two-thirty, whether they take bookings, and whether dogs are welcome in the bar or only the garden. Village pubs change their Sunday hours with the season, so check in the week you are going rather than trusting a memory from last summer.

Five Norfolk walks that end at a good table

These are routes rather than prescriptions. Each ends in a village or town with at least one pub doing Sunday lunch, and each can be shortened or extended without much fuss.

1. Blakeney to Cley and back. A flat four or five miles along the Norfolk Coast Path, out through the salt marsh and back along the lane. Huge skies, reedbeds, and the chance of seeing marsh harriers. Both villages have pubs, so you can eat at whichever end suits your legs. Check tide times before you go, as a few stretches of the marsh path flood on the biggest tides.
2. Holkham to Wells-next-the-Sea. Roughly three miles each way through the pines and then along the beach, with the option of the inland path if the wind is brutal. Wells has plenty of places to eat, and the walk back along the sand at dusk is one of the best things in the county.
3. Blickling to Aylsham on the Weavers' Way. Start in the parkland at Blickling, follow the old railway line into Aylsham, and eat in town. About four miles each way, gentle underfoot, and it holds up well in wet weather because so much of it is on old trackbed.
4. Coltishall to Wroxham along the Bure Valley Path. Flat, riverside, and easy to navigate — follow the river and the narrow-gauge railway line. Around five miles one way. Boats, moorhens, and a choice of pubs at either end.
5. Castle Acre and the Nar Valley. The priory, the earthworks and the old town are worth an hour on their own, then a loop out through the fields towards South Acre. Not a coastal walk, so it is a good pick when the wind is coming straight off the sea.

What to check before you commit to a pub

• Serving hours. Plenty of kitchens close between lunch and evening service, and last orders for food can be earlier than you expect.
• Booking. A table for four at one o'clock on a sunny Sunday needs a phone call, sometimes days ahead.
• Dogs. Often allowed in the bar but not the dining room, which changes where you want to sit.
• Distance from the path. A mile along a road with no verge is worse than three miles of field edge. Look at the map, not just the postcode.
• Parking. If you are leaving a car at the pub all morning, say so when you book.
• Boots and wet gear. Ask whether there is somewhere to leave muddy boots. Most places would rather know than have you guess.

Timing the day so nobody gets hangry

Assume two miles an hour with a stop or two. Four miles, then, is a two-hour walk. Work backwards from your table:

• 9.30am — light breakfast, boots on, flask filled.
• 10.15am — start walking.
• 12.15pm — arrive, order a drink, sit down before you are too tired to enjoy it.
• 1pm — the booked table.
• 3pm — coffee, then home. In winter, aim to be back at the car before four.

That schedule also gives you a buffer. Norfolk footpaths get ploughed over, gates stick, and someone always needs a photograph of a windmill.

Ordering well, and walking it off afterwards

If you have done the miles, order the bigger plate. A roast is not the moment for restraint, and the local version is usually straightforward: beef with horseradish, pork with crackling and apple sauce, lamb with mint, chicken with stuffing. The details that separate a good one from a forgettable one are in the sides — roast potatoes that have actually been in hot fat, gravy that tastes of the meat it came with, and vegetables that have not been sitting under a lamp since eleven.

Ask for extra gravy. Most kitchens will bring it without a fuss. If the pub brews or serves local beer, try a pint of something from Woodforde's, Barsham, Panther or the Norfolk Brewhouse — it is a better match with roast beef than a heavy red, and it is what the county drinks. Then walk the last half mile to the car rather than driving straight off. It is not a fitness regime, just a sensible way to finish.

Norfolk specifics worth knowing

The wind here is the thing people underestimate. Even on a bright day, the coast can be two layers colder than inland, so take a shell you can tie round your waist. Marsh paths hold water long after rain, and the black mud along the Bure and the Wensum is genuinely slippery, which is a good argument for boots with tread rather than trainers.

Carry a paper map or a charged phone with an offline map. Field-edge paths get diverted, and a footpath shown across a field on a 1970s map may now run round it. On the coast, check tide tables — some sections between Cley, Salthouse and the marshes can be cut off at high water, and the sea comes in fast across the flats.

Before you set off

Book the table first, check the serving hours, and tell someone which route you are walking and roughly when you expect to be back. Take water, a waterproof, a bit of cash, and a bag for wet boots so you are not ruining a pub carpet or a car boot. If you are new to longer walks, build up the distance over a few weekends rather than jumping straight to eight miles.

Get those small things right and a Norfolk Sunday looks after itself: tired legs, a plate you did not have to cook, and the drive home in the last of the light.

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