The Loddon Swan stands on Church Plain, opposite the medieval church, with a handful of rooms in the old town hall next door. Andy Freeland runs it as a freehouse, and the kitchen moves with the season: past menus have run to a mini rabbit pie with English mustard, a Toft Monks hogget Scotch egg with burnt-cauliflower purée, a Blythburgh pork T-bone with champ and pear salad, ale-battered haddock, and a dark-brown-sugar tart with chamomile sorbet to finish. There is a courtyard for warm evenings.
The Angel pours five changing real ales, most of them brewed within fifty miles, and keeps real cider, family games and live music going in a stable-yard garden. The King's Head is the livelier of the three: darts, pool, sports on the screens, weekend bands and a large garden with a children's play area. Its kitchen is between menus for now, so daytime food runs to sausage rolls and baguettes, though the cask beer holds up — Mauldons Moletrap Bitter and Adnams Ghost Ship.
For provisions there is AJ Ward, a butcher in Loddon since 1881, selling Blythburgh free-range pork, its own sausage rolls and steak-and-ale pies, Baron Bigod and Mrs Temple's cheeses, and bread from Stradbroke Bakery. Loddon Deli & Coffee, also on Church Plain, deals in artisan cheeses, smokehouse charcuterie, raw Broads honey and preserves made from local orchard fruit.
The River Chet runs along the edge of the village to Loddon Staithe, and the Chet River Circular starts there — 2.2 miles, about 1¼ hours, waymarked past reed banks and grazing meadows and back through Chedgrave. It is a good stretch for dragonflies, kingfishers and the odd marsh harrier. If you want the legs to feel it, the Loddon–Warren Hills walk runs closer to five miles and crosses the A146.
Holy Trinity was built almost in one go in the fifteenth century, finished in 1496 for Sir James Hobart of Hales Hall, whose long brick gatehouse still stands. Inside there is a Seven Sacraments font, its carvings defaced, and a painted medieval screen that includes St William of Norwich. Above the porch door is a rare survival, a statue of the Holy Trinity — "albeit God has a new head."
The town is older than any of this. A market was granted in 1269, a Friday market and an Easter Monday cattle fair, and by 1841 Church Plain was being called The Fairstead. Regular wherry services to Norwich and Yarmouth began in 1884; the timber Guildhall once held the village lock-up, The Clink, and the site is now the library. The watermill still stands, weatherboarded beside the river, though the Chet was long ago diverted to run beneath it and it no longer turns.
Norwich is the practical railhead, with the X21 and X22 Coastlink buses linking it to Loddon, Beccles and Lowestoft along the A146. Raveningham Gardens, Beccles quay and the restored wartime control tower at Seething are all within reach.
At the King's Head there is a dog called Benny. A guest, Macy M, wrote that her small boy had loved him.