Dilham

The Cross Keys and its kitchen

The Cross Keys stands in the middle of Dilham, a free house with a public bar, a games room and a restaurant at the back, its south-facing terrace looking out over what used to be a bowling green. CAMRA reckons it the most northerly pub on the Broads, a short walk from the quiet River Ant moorings. Timothy Taylor Landlord is the regular cask beer, with a couple of changing guests that often include Wildcraft.

The kitchen runs from a pie of the day with smoked mash and a Cross Keys burger to smoked mackerel pâté, a fisherman's sharing board, sea-bream ceviche, lamb rump and pan-seared cod. On Sundays you choose between pork belly, chicken, local sirloin or a nut-roast Wellington. Dogs are welcome in the bar, on the patio and in the outside seating. The building started as a private house in the 1730s and became a pub in 1794; by the 1830s it was tied to the Norwich brewers Steward & Patteson. Adam and Rachel run it now.

The canal's working years

Dilham marks the point where practical navigation for the larger Broads craft gives out. Beyond the village the North Walsham & Dilham Canal carries on for nearly nine miles through farmland, wet ground and wooded banks, Norfolk's only locked wherry sailing canal. A hundred navvies from Bedford began digging it in 1825 and it opened the next year, moving cargo by wherry to the mills strung along its length. The last commercial sailing was in 1934, by a wherry called Ella. Then the railway took the trade, and the locks and bridges were left to weeds and dry stretches until volunteers began clearing it in 2001. Ivan Cane, who chaired the restoration trust, called it "Norfolk's industrial archaeological gem is coming back to life."

To walk it, take the six-mile East Ruston circular, which follows wooded stretches of the canal past Honing Common and the church of St Peter and St Paul, with a chance of otter or kingfisher along the way. The canal itself is privately owned, three companies and one family between them, so keep to the signed rights of way rather than assume a towpath runs the whole route.

St Nicholas and Domesday Dilham

St Nicholas has had a hard structural life. The medieval church was replaced in the eighteenth century; a round tower added in 1835 later failed, and the building was rebuilt in the 1930s with the tower's stump kept on as a baptistery. Inside are a partly medieval font, a restrained angel roof, Stations of the Cross, and a bell cast in Norwich by John Brend in 1653, hung in a south-west turret. The east window remembers Canon John Lawrence, vicar here for fifty-seven years. By 1086 the village was already divided among four owners, with twelve acres of meadow between them and woodland enough for six pigs; Robert Malet's holding also ran to a cob and seven pigs.

Rail connections and nearby visits

North Walsham has the nearest station, unstaffed, on the Bittern Line between Norwich and Sheringham, and Sanders route 6 stops on The Street on its way between North Walsham, Stalham and Great Yarmouth. A few miles out, East Ruston Old Vicarage opens thirty-two acres of exotic, gravel and woodland planting with a tearoom, and the Museum of the Broads at Stalham runs boat trips from its river frontage.

The playing field's village legacy

The playing field, about the size of a football pitch and still open to the public even when it is hired out, was given in 1937 by Edward Williams on the day of George VI's coronation, in memory of his wife Elizabeth, a village dressmaker. Two copper beeches were planted for the next coronation, in 1953, and they are still there beside the children's swings.