Catfield

The Crown, from supper to song

At The Crown Inn, guests can stay in a detached former doctor's surgery. The pub has a real fire in winter, a separate dining room and a secluded garden. Scott and Gail run it, with Scott cooking home-prepared food with an Italian influence. Its menu has featured steak-and-kidney suet pudding, bangers and mash, ham, egg and chips, and Sunday roasts in three sizes; fish and chips and pizza have also been offered as takeaways. Dogs are welcome, and the changing real ales are mostly local.

Licensing records reach back to at least 1794. Between about 1896 and 1960, traditional singers including Harry Cox, William "Bullets" Miller, Jack "Fruit" Riseborough and Bob "Sky" Parker visited frequently.

Stores, staithes and the working waters

Catfield Stores and Post Office on The Street is a Premier shop carrying fresh bread, fruit and vegetables, meat and poultry, newspapers and frozen food. It provides village provisions; Stalham, the nearest market town, is about three miles away.

Catfield sits between Barton and Hickling Broads on farmland that gives way to reed and open water. It was once a wherry hub: three staithes worked the River Ant while Catfield Staithe served the dyke running towards the Thurne, sending out farm produce and taking in corn, coal, manure and building materials. Three 24-hour visitor moorings remain on the dyke, which connects to Hickling Broad.

Seeing the fen from its edges

Catfield Fen, part of the Ant Broads and Marshes reserve, is a swallowtail stronghold. Most of the wet reserve is closed to open public access because of hidden ditches, soft dyke sides and vegetation over water holes. The public Rond footpath follows the raised bank along its western and southern edges, with views into the fen and swallowtails visiting milk parsley. At Barton Broad, a boardwalk runs through wet woodland to the water; its main car park is on Long Road, about 1 km from the trailhead on Irstead Road. Guided trips at Hickling use the twelve-seat electric boats *Swallowtail* and *Damselfly*.

Kings, paint and Cowper at All Saints'

All Saints' is Grade I and worth the detour. The chancel screen carries fifteen canonised kings and one queen painted along its base, a wall painting of the Stoning of St Stephen dated to about 1377, and a small upper room over the two-storey porch. The poet William Cowper stayed at the Old Rectory beside the churchyard with his uncle, the rector, and his aunt, and later wrote: "Of al the places in the earth, I love Catfield."

Buses, trains and a windpump in the marsh

The village is just off the A149, with Sanders buses calling at the village hall and the nearest trains at Hoveton and Wroxham. Out in the marsh stands Swim Coots windpump, also called Ling's Mill, a brick tower whose scoopwheel has lost its paddles but still sits where water runs through it.