Neatishead

A Brew Pub with History

The White Horse is a village brew pub serving its own Pell & Co beer. Its low snug and main bar have open fires, beams and pamment tiles and lead into a newer room with glass doors onto a patio. Woodforde's Wherry is the fixed cask beer, with four others changing through from the likes of Adnams, Grain, Batemans and the Bristol Beer Factory. The kitchen's Norfolk suppliers include Swannington Farm, Tavern Tasty Meats and Brown & May Fish, and it turns out a handmade pie of the day, beer-battered haddock, wild-mushroom mac and cheese, and a Blackshore Rarebit burger, with a Squashed Nut Burger for anyone who doesn't eat meat. Dogs are welcome in the bar but not the restaurant; ask for a bar table and a water bowl arrives.

The building reputedly dates from 1815. A passage once ran between its two bars, possibly with an off-sales hatch, until it was blocked up in the 1960s, and the lower public bar went more than eighty years without much alteration before a 2014 renovation took out most of the old features. The quarry-tile floor and the cast range survived.

Community Life by Limekiln Dyke

The village shop, White House Stores, is owned by the people who use it. When the old shop closed at the end of 2011, residents formed a society, bought the freehold, won a £42,400 grant and reopened in March 2013, with the local MP Norman Lamb cutting the ribbon. It serves Neatishead and the neighbouring hamlets of Irstead and Barton Turf.

The village sits on flat ground that tips gently down to a stream on its north side. That stream is Limekiln Dyke, widened for boats almost to the houses, and it runs a mile or so east into Barton Broad. You can arrive here by water: the staithe was dug in 1933 for £300, three months after the parish council approved the idea, never as a trading wharf but to give visitors somewhere to moor. There is a water point and a climbing wall, but no overnight mooring and no overnight parking.

Broadland Walks and St Peter's

From a signed car park between Neatishead and Irstead, a kilometre's walk reaches an accessible boardwalk that runs through wet carr woodland to a platform over Barton Broad — 153 hectares of water, the second largest of the Broads, dug out as peat in the Middle Ages and later crossed by the diverted River Ant. A longer circuit carries on down Irstead Road and Shoals Road and back by field edges; on it you might see marsh tit, tufted duck, siskin, buzzard or an otter. Quieter lanes link the three villages and lead to landlocked Alderfen Broad and its viewing platform.

St Peter's is what remains of a mid-14th-century church after the decayed nave and tower were pulled down in 1790 and the chancel kept on as a small building. Inside are an octagonal traceried font, a linenfold pulpit, a single poppyhead bench end, and a carving of a winged beast holding a man's head in its beak. The pulpit holds coins dated 1790 and 1990.

Radar Rooms and Cold War History

The RAF Air Defence Radar Museum fills eighteen rooms in original RAF buildings, including Britain's only original Cold War Operations Room. RAF Neatishead opened in June 1941 and became Britain's longest continuously occupied radar station; its Type 84 tracked Soviet aircraft over the North Sea from 1963 until 1993. Allow a whole day to explore the collection.

Wroxham Links and the Lime Avenue

Four miles off, Wroxham and Hoveton have day-boat and cruiser hire, the Bure Valley Railway and, for younger visitors, BeWILDerwood; they also hold the nearest trains, step-free at Hoveton & Wroxham station. When you come back, an avenue of limes runs up to the churchyard, planted in 1919 for the village's dead of the First World War.