The first of a new occasional series on city walks follows a quiet path along the Wensum – rather than main streets – to discover Norwich’s architectural treasures and rich history

Faced with an unfamiliar city, the temptation for many visitors is to head straight for the centre. In Norwich, this is particularly true for those who go by train: the station forecourt seems to be pointing you towards the main drag, the bridge over the river, the shops, the castle and the museum.

Those who resist this temptation and take the river path will find the town’s history and geography revealing itself in a particularly pleasing manner, without missing out anything major.

This three-mile route starts at the station, just beyond which the A1242 crosses the Wensum river to become Prince of Wales Road. Leave the road and strike north along the footpath by the watercourse, heading upstream. If it feels like a diversion, this is because it is precisely that, but a very fruitful one. The houses end and walkers will find themselves with the water on their right and a sudden sweep of playing field on their left. When the magnificent cornet of the cathedral appears to the west, it becomes clear that you have pulled off a trick in viewing this extraordinary city, and are doing so by means of a corridor occupying that classic English ground between urban and bucolic.

Within a few hundred yards you run into two strange buildings which bear evidence of Norwich’s strategic importance and historic significance. First is Pulls Ferry, the site of the watergate through which the French stone for the cathedral was carried to the site by a specially built canal. The second, a few minutes’ walk further on, is Cow Tower, a pugnacious 15-metre-high tower, built in the 14th century but clearly dug in for eternity. Its slits and apertures display in graphic terms the evolution of defensive measures, from the bow and arrow to the cannon.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Cow Tower Photograph: Alamy

Here, the Wensum does a sharp left. A fine object of exploration in its own right, the river has headed for the city via Fakenham, 25 miles away to the north-west, in a squiggle of whorls and elbows – the name comes from wending – and goes on to join the Yare and hit the sea at Great Yarmouth.

The banks turn briefly modern after Cow Tower – a glass and concrete gym, the offices of business consultants, the magistrates’ court – before being crossed by Whitefriars, and back a millennium or so. There’s no point in coming to Norwich without doing the cathedral. As crude, phallic gauges of civic grandeur go, this one is up there in the top flight. At 96 metres high, it is second only to Salisbury, which stands at 123 metres. In his recent book on England’s cathedrals, Simon Jenkins, never profligate with his praise, gives its soaring masonry a four-star rating, placing it just beneath the fantastical buildings of Durham, Ely and Wells.

Norwich was bypassed by the Industrial Revolution, and is the only English city to stand in a national park – The Broads

It is here that Norwich is at its most striking. Between Tombland (the Anglo-Saxon market place) and the Wensum are buildings, domestic and ecclesiastical, dating from the 15th century and dutifully clustering around the cathedral. Nowhere are you reminded more graphically that Norwich was, by virtue of its location, bypassed by the Industrial Revolution, and is the only English city to stand in a national park (The Broads).

From the Civil War into the 18th century, it was second in size only to London, and a major trading centre with a history of wool-based wealth. Head south down Tombland, then Queen Street and Bank Plain. Here is the castle, a stop every bit as essential as the cathedral. Standing at its battlements and looking beyond the relatively compact splendour of the roofscape, you can still feel the weight and status of a regional capital and frontier redoubt. In the distance the fens begin, leading your eye over the huge productive flatness towards the true and most ancient enemy, the encroaching sea.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The cathedral – its spire is second only to Salisbury in height. Photograph: Getty Images/SuperStock RM

Pick up the thread of the Wensum again by way of London Street, Exchange Street, Charing Cross, Westwick Street, then turn right over the Coslany Street bridge. Past the houses lining the bank, at the head of the river’s navigation, is a most peculiar thing. It’s by no means as ornate or monumental as the places already seen, but it is more eccentric: standing in the middle of the river is a bridge posing as a building, or vice versa. This is New Mills, “new” being a very relative word in Norwich. Here it refers to the early 15th century, when the site housed the latest technology in corn-grinding. Two hundred years later it was besieged by a crowd of Norwich citizens demanding fairer bread prices. What you see today is the shell of another obsolete novelty, a Victorian pneumatic ejection sewage pump.

Head down to St Benedicts Street by way of Westwick and St Swithins, then down Lower Goat Lane into the bright, rather homely Market Place, with the old (Guildhall and St Peter Mancroft) cohabiting with the (relatively) new City Council building and Library, dogged and matter-of-fact after such an eyeful of stonework. Head east, skirting the south of the castle, then follow Rose Lane all the way into Prince of Wales Road, the thoroughfare you dodged at the very start.

Don’t pass through the station without a glance at the departures boards. Norwich is quite a rail crossroads, and there are beautiful hinterland lines going up to the north Norfolk coast at Cromer and Sheringham, and over the fens and reed beds to Lowestoft. Not forgetting the Wensum water’s last stop, Great Yarmouth. Why not, since you’ve come this far?