At Gillingham Dam, on the edge of the village, Hippersons boatyard keeps a fleet of small electric day boats with names that read like a river survey conducted by an optimist: Catchalot, Otter, Grebe, Teal and Bittern, plus a diesel called Heron and a two-person pedal boat named Moorhen. You hire one for the day and take it onto the River Waveney, which runs toward the southern edge of the parish. There is also the Waveney Stardust, a heated cruiser with a wheelchair lift and hoist, crewed by an approved skipper, for groups that include someone who could not otherwise get onto the water.
The village sits on the Norfolk side of the valley, marshland falling away to the south and farmland rising to the north. The A143 and A146 meet at a roundabout on its edge, and this is where the practical side of the village lives: a Londis and Shell Select for provisions and food to go. It is a convenience store rather than a food destination, which is worth knowing before you plan a self-catered week around it.
The Swan Motel does the eating. Behind a plain frontage are two dining rooms, a bar and fourteen rooms, and a kitchen that ranges wider than most village pubs: chicken liver and apricot pâté with date-and-orange chutney, home-smoked salmon with dill sauce, lamb shank in red wine and rosemary, chicken supreme with leek and Stilton, beer-battered cod or haddock, and, for the meat-averse, a tomato and buffalo mozzarella ravioli or a spinach roulade with herb and mushroom sauce. There is a Sunday carvery and a run of daily specials. Adnams Southwold Bitter and Ghost Ship are the regular ales, the beer garden faces south, and dogs are welcome. CAMRA calls it a "stylish half pub/ half restaurant". A Swan has stood here since 1789, when the saddler next door owned it; the saddler's buildings are gone.
St Mary's is the reason to slow down. It is a cruciform Norman church, Grade I listed, with a western narthex, a central square tower and an apsidal chancel, which is an unusual shape for Norfolk. The twelfth-century work survives in a billet-moulded west doorway, a zigzag north doorway and richly moulded openings in the tower; the Victorians restored and extended it in 1858, to a design by Thomas Penrice of Lowestoft. Inside are two coloured fifteenth-century screen panels, a brass to John Everard dated 1553, and a 1666 wall monument to Nicholas Bacon. In the same churchyard stands the tower of All Saints, a second medieval church demolished in 1748 and never rebuilt, so the parish keeps two towers and one working church.
The village's third church holds a stranger story. John George Kenyon of Gillingham Hall converted to Catholicism, joined the Papal Zouaves in 1870 to defend Rome, was captured when Victor Emmanuel's troops took the city, and spent six months in prison before coming home to pay for a Catholic chapel. Our Lady of Perpetual Succour opened in 1898 with twin bell towers modelled on the Trinità dei Monti in Rome. Its restored crucifix commemorates his son, Major Joseph Robert Kenyon, whose shell shock in the First World War kept him in hospital for the rest of his life.
For walking, a seven-mile circuit links Gillingham with Geldeston and Beccles, following the Waveney past a cluster of three churches, open grazing marsh and floodbanks; it climbs a modest 120 metres and takes about two and a half hours. Beccles, the market town about a mile and a half off, has a quay, an outdoor lido and a detached bell tower, and is where you catch the train, at the unstaffed Beccles station, with trains toward Lowestoft and Ipswich. First's X2/X21/X22 buses run the Lowestoft–Beccles–Norwich road and stop at the Gillingham bus shelter. Further out, Carlton Marshes packs bird hides, a café and twenty-eight species of dragonfly into a thousand accessible acres.
Back at the Dam, the day boats come in as the light goes, and someone ties up the Moorhen for the night.