A railway bridge across the River Yare swings open on its pivot to let boats through, then closes again for the trains running between Norwich and Lowestoft. It replaced a Victorian predecessor in the early 1900s and has been doing the same job for more than a century. The garden of The Ship, at 19 Riverside, looks straight at it, so you can watch trains and river craft take their turns from a table with a drink in front of you.
The Ship serves home-cooked food and Sunday roasts, puts on live music, and lets dogs in. It is one of three pubs in and around Reedham. The quay in front of them sees boats moor, the water move, and the marshes open out beyond.
A few doors along at 38 Riverside, the Lord Nelson is hung with pub memorabilia and runs a menu that wanders further than most village kitchens. Alongside the steak-and-ale pie and Sunday roast you can order Nelson curry, a Thai burger, Cajun chicken and sticky toffee pudding. It has been serving since at least the early 19th century, and the 1969 Egon Ronay guide named it one of eighteen Norfolk pubs worth stopping for. A visitor called Ricky Smith left a line the pub is happy to repeat: "Lovely Nelson curry and Thai Burger gave our dog some treats."
The third pub is a short way downstream at the ferry. The Reedham chain ferry is Norfolk's only operating chain ferry, hand-wound when the Archer family took it over in 1949 and given a diesel engine the following year. The present vessel was built at Oulton Broad in 1984 by Fred Newson and David Archer, and carries two cars or seven tonnes across the Yare on demand, without booking. It saves a drive of more than thirty miles round to the nearest bridge. The Reedham Ferry Inn beside it is family-run, welcomes well-behaved dogs in the bar and conservatory, and pours Woodforde's and beers from Reedham's own Humpty Dumpty Brewery. It was Broads Pub of the Year in 1973.
The brewery has a shop on Church Road, next to Pettitts, selling its bottled beers along with local gins, ciders and chilli sauces. The house names include Reedham Gold, Little Sharpie, Swallowtail and Swingbridge Stout. Back on the quay, Cannell's by the River is a café, deli and farm shop with its own coffee roaster, stocking local cheeses, fresh bread and Harris & James cakes and gelato. The all-day breakfast is built from Norfolk pork sausages, dry-cured back bacon and farm eggs.
From the quay you can pick up the Wherryman's Way, which follows the Yare between Norwich and Great Yarmouth through reedbed and grazing marsh, passing the Polkey's Mill drainage complex east of the village. A four-mile circular walk starts here too, flat, stile-free and soft underfoot, taking in the ferry, the swing bridge and the riverbank with the marshes stretching out toward Norton. This is the largest expanse of grazing marsh in eastern England, and on a clear day the view runs for miles.
St John the Baptist stands back from the water, Grade I, largely 14th century with a 15th-century tower, though part of the north wall may go back further, to around 1100, and holds reused Roman tile set in herringbone. The Berney Chapel keeps a 1584 chest tomb. A fire gutted the church in March 1981; villagers rebuilt it inside two years, with new stained glass by Sarah Bristow and ash pews by John Barnard. The Domesday surveyors counted thirty-seven households here and valued the two recorded holdings at four pounds, six shillings and sevenpence between them.
Pettitts Animal Adventure Park is home to meerkats, wallabies, raccoons and lemurs. A bench on the quay, a train crossing the water, and the ferry hauling itself back and forth on its chain.