Stout seal on sandy beach

A stout seal

From the Wash in the west to the Winterton Dunes out east, the Norfolk Coast stretches about 90 miles along the top of East Anglia. The gently curving coast plays host to beachgoers from all over Britain and beyond each summer, but here we see a more permanent resident. Less common but larger than their harbor seal cousins, gray seals like this well-fed juvenile are a frequent sight upon the cold seas of Northern Europe. A gray seal colony on Blakeney Point, a shingle spit right here in Norfolk where over 3,000 pups are born per year, is the biggest single-site pinniped population in England.