An Historic Weekend

During January we are having a break from our longer travel adventures, but our Gap Year fun continues. The first weekend of 2026 was spent staying in the Martello Tower in Aldeburgh, on the coast of Suffolk. My brother, Stuart, joined us for this weekend as our post-Christmas get together.

This trip needed some additional planning, due to its inaccessibility but, as we holiday in Suffolk every year, I was able to make a couple of reconnaissance visits last year and the year before.

The tower is owned by the Landmark Trust, an organisation that renovates and lets out unusual and historic buildings as holiday accommodation. The Martello Tower had been on my wish list of places to stay for sometime. In 2024 I met with the housekeeper to see if it would be possible to stay there with Racheal. I found that, if we could overcome the obstacle of 13 steps up to the drawbridge, we would have no trouble managing inside as the interior is spacious and all on one level. The ground around the moat is banked up to the top of the steps and over the years people have created a footpath which was manageable with Racheal‘s off-road wheelchair. However, at the top of the path we were faced with the side profile of the top two steps where we would need to make a 90° turn onto the drawbridge. I measured the width, depth and rise of the steps so that I could build a frame to make a platform which we could access from the footpath by way of our portable ramps. I have to confess, I was a little nervous until we had successfully negotiated it the first time. I was confident that the frame was strong and the dimensions were right but there was a ‘what if it doesn’t work’ niggle at the back of my mind. Before using it with Racheal, I tried it with our trolley full of luggage and it worked a treat.

When we arrived at the Martello Tower, the weather was bitterly cold but surprisingly warm and cozy inside. Once we had unloaded the essentials from the car, we set about making it feel like home including the last outing for our travel Christmas tree as it was still before the 6th of January.

Built in the early 1800s the tower was built as coastal defence and would have housed up to 25 soldiers with four gun positions. It’s thick rounded walls providing resistance to enemy attack. This particular one is unusual in that it is a quadrafoil shape, but that lends itself quite nicely to the creation of rooms.

We entered through the kitchen area, with a bathroom area screened off to one side. In the centre is a large dining area, and off this two bedrooms and a sitting room closest to the sea. The rooms are screened with wooden panelling but not divided all the way to the high ceiling. In the sitting room there is an efficient log burner, but we had to turn the heating down in order to use it or we would’ve cooked! Each room has a window with steps up to it and big wooden shutters.

There are two staircases up to the roof where you have an amazing 360° view of the sea and river, but with the temperature is well below freezing it wasn’t somewhere you wanted to linger long in January. My visit to the roof was at sunrise!

On Saturday we decided to visit Sutton Hoo, stepping even further back in time to 600AD. As it was still extremely cold, Racheal and I sat in the café while Stuart and Summer went off to explore the ancient burial mounds. After lunch we looked at the exhibition, explored some ‘touch objects’ and enjoyed chatting to ladies who were demonstrating traditional crafts. Sutton Hoo has a new Changing Places Toilet making it much easier to stay all day.

Sunday, we decided to make the most of our fortified accommodation, so while Stuart went off to explore another local castle Summer Racheal and I stayed cosy and warm in the tower. Summer and Racheal spent most of the day doing a number of craft projects that we had brought with us while I had the very rare opportunity to spend hours reading a book that I’d received for Christmas.

We had seen a little snow on Saturday, but on Monday morning we woke to a covering of snow.

It was time to pack up and return to Norfolk where they had had much more snow than us. Stuart left early he had much further to drive and we loaded the car, taking care on the slippery path. The weekend was over far too quickly. It had been an amazing place to stay, probably a once in a lifetime, but we have more exciting Landmarks to stay in later this year.