The Boathouse stands on Eels Foot Road with its bay windows turned toward the Broads, close enough that you eat lunch looking at the reeds. Inside there is exposed brick, oak beams and open fireplaces; outside there are tables set for the view, with rooms upstairs and lodges in the woodland behind. The Sunday menu runs to roast beef and roast leg of lamb, sea bass with king-prawn-and-clam linguine, beer-battered cod, and a sweet-potato and wild-mushroom loaf for anyone skipping the meat, with a heritage-tomato salad in summer.
It is the only pub in the village now. The Sportsman, later the Sportsmen's Arms, closed in October 1948; among its licensees were the farmer Jeremiah Shalders, who kept it through the 1860s and 70s, and Samuel Richmond after him.
Ormesby St Michael is small — a scatter of houses along the A149, wedged between Ormesby Broad on one side and Ormesby Little Broad on the other. These are two of the five Trinity Broads, and they are landlocked: no navigable connection links them to the main Broads network, and no paddle craft are allowed on the water, which is privately owned. What that leaves is clear water, reedbeds and wet woodland, and the wildlife that comes with quiet — otters, water voles, wintering wildfowl. Norfolk Wildlife Trust calls it "a haven for wildlife."
For walking, public footpaths give short circuits with Broad views; the main way in is at Filby Bridge, though dogs other than assistance dogs are not allowed on the reserve. A gentler option runs next door: an easy mile-and-a-half loop from Memorial Green in Ormesby St Margaret, mostly on firm ground. That neighbouring village also has Hirst's Farm Shop at Mill Farm on North Road, with a café, home-reared meat and an in-house fishmonger called Dabs 'n' Crabs; breakfasts, lunches, cakes and scones are the order of the day.
The church of St Michael repays the short walk. It is flint and chert with a thatched nave, the tower and chancel dating from the thirteenth century and the nave from the fourteenth. The font is a plain octagonal C13 basin ringed by eight columns of Purbeck marble. Three windows in the chancel are the work of Henry Holiday, made between 1898 and 1920. The village sign shows the Archangel Michael in the act of killing a demon.
People have lived here a long time. A 2010 dig turned up Early Neolithic pits and, rarer, securely dated Middle Bronze Age field systems, along with loom weights and a whetstone. By 1086 the Domesday surveyors were counting ploughs and meadow — thirty-four acres of it on the main holding — in the hundred of East Flegg.
There is one resident worth naming. Walter Westgate grew up in the village, went to the Somme to tend horses with the Army Service Corps, was gassed, came home and served as an air-raid warden at Blofield, and lived to 86. His medals turned up years later at a recycling centre and were returned to his family, who said they were "absolutely delighted to have these family heirlooms back with us, safe and sound."
Great Yarmouth and its seafront are about six miles off, with the A149 running straight there and the Sanders X6 stopping on Eels Foot Road. Thrigby Hall keeps snow leopards and red pandas a short drive away. But the reason to be here is the water, and the reeds moving on it in the wind.