The sails at Hardley Mill turn when the wind allows, and when they do, the mill is open. That is the whole of the timetable. Volunteers put it that way because there is no more reliable way to describe an 1874 drainage windpump run by people who arrive when conditions suit. You can climb to the balcony at cap level for a view across the marsh, and on the right day the turbine pump inside will be demonstrated.
The mill stands on grazing marsh between the River Yare and the River Chet, which is more or less the whole character of the place: drainage dykes, reedbed, floodbanks, a shallow lagoon, and distant woodland on slightly higher ground. A Ludham millwright named Daniel England built it to drain this land. It worked until about 1950, when damage led to an electric pump taking over, and volunteers began restoring it in 1992, finishing the cap and sails in 2009.
Hardley Staithe itself is a mooring and a starting point. Don't expect a pub, a shop or a bakery here. What there is instead is the Wherryman's Way, the long-distance path named after the black-sailed cargo wherries that once worked these rivers. From Hardley Dyke it links the mill with the riverside cross.
That cross sits at the junction of the Yare and the Chet, marking the old boundary between the jurisdictions of Norwich and Great Yarmouth. A marker has stood there since the 1400s, and the present one has been repaired in 1820, 1884, 1899 and 1990. Six boat moorings lie nearby. You reach it by following the riverbank towards Chedgrave.
Hardley Flood, the wide sheet of water and reed south of the river, is a fairly recent thing: shallow lagoon and reedbed that developed after the 1953 floods. Its mud, exposed at low tide, draws waders in spring and autumn, and the reedbeds hold nationally important breeding shoveler, pochard and gadwall. The bird hide is closed at present, its access path shut and the structure awaiting repair, so for now the birds are watched from the bank.
The Church of St Margaret stands a little inland, mainly fourteenth and fifteenth century, with twelfth-century work in the base of the round west tower. Inside there is a large medieval wall painting of St Christopher, a fifteenth-century octagonal font carved with lions and angels, box pews set around older poppyhead benches, and a chalice engraved "Hardla" that is still in use. In the churchyard, a wheel-head Celtic cross unveiled in 1920 serves as the war memorial, and near it a stone remembers Samuel Warman, Frederick James Fish and Major William Lutkin, aged twenty-two, eighteen and seventeen, who drowned in the Yare on 11 August 1914. Its closing words are "A tragic accident." The church is listed Grade I, its condition is very bad, and it sits on the Heritage at Risk register.
For food and supplies you go to Loddon and Chedgrave, on the A146, where there are butchers, farm shops and pubs. The Loddon Swan on Church Plain, run by Andy Freeland with Jack in the kitchen, serves Cromer crab on toast with rhubarb and fennel, beer-glazed local duck, and Cambridge burnt cream, with Woodforde's and Wolf ales at the bar. The White Horse in Chedgrave changes its menu daily. Across the Yare at Reedham, reached by the chain ferry that has crossed here since the seventeenth century or by a long drive round, the Reedham Ferry Inn does breakfasts and a Sunday roast with a choice of meats and lets well-behaved dogs into the bar and conservatory.
The nearest railway station, Cantley, is on the far bank with two parking spaces and no bus to meet it. Hardley is reached by minor lanes south of the river, and the route is worth planning before you set out. When the sails at the mill are turning, you will see them from some way off across the flat ground.