Strumpshaw

Pints, plates and pétanque

Behind the Shoulder of Mutton, on Norwich Road, there is a pétanque piste. The pub is an 18th-century building set back from the road, describing itself as dog, horse and steam engine-friendly. Inside there is a public bar with a pool table and a separate restaurant; outside, a front terrace and patios stepped up the slope behind. The three regular cask ales are Adnams Southwold Bitter, Adnams Ghost Ship and Moon Gazer Hare Today, the last brewed for the pub by Norfolk's Moon Gazer and shared with the Wig & Pen in Norwich. Three guest ales rotate alongside them.

The kitchen does takeaway fish and chips, pork and beef Sunday roasts, and seafood specials from local produce. Dogs are welcome in the bar but not the dining room. In summer the pub runs its own beer festival, Mutton Stock, and between pints there is bar billiards, darts and board games.

From reedbeds to steam power

A little south, the land drops to the River Yare and the reedbeds of RSPB Strumpshaw Fen, where the Broads are pressed into a small space of pools, wet meadow, woodland and three named broads: Old Broad, New Broad and Accidental Broad. The Fen Trail runs 3.8 kilometres to the Tower Hide through reeds where marsh harriers quarter and bitterns boom. The shorter Meadow Trail, half a kilometre to the riverbank, is worth timing for late May to mid-July, when swallowtail butterflies may be seen and Norfolk hawker dragonflies hunt the ditches. The Woodland Trail turns up bluebells in spring and treecreepers in winter. Children get a Wild Adventure Trail with dens and minibeast tasks. Dogs, other than assistance dogs, stay at home; the wildlife is the point.

The other thing to do here has wheels and a boiler. Strumpshaw Hall Steam Museum grew out of one man's collecting: Wesley Spanton Key, a farmer and pilot, began gathering steam engines in the early 1950s, moved them here, and opened the collection in 1964. He started the Strumpshaw steam rally in 1968 and ran it until he died in 1995. The museum now holds 26 engines, the oldest from 1898, along with a 100-ton beam engine, a narrow-gauge railway, a 1930s fairground and mechanical organs. His family kept it going; his daughter Kiki and her husband Kurt look after it now.

Flint, paint and a carved dragon

St Peter's stands on the higher ground, a Grade I church mostly of the 14th and 15th centuries, its tall west tower paid for by bequests in the 1480s. Inside is an early-15th-century screen still holding its red, green and floral paint, an octagonal font carved with four seated lions, and a double piscina with a tiny carved dragon. Pevsner thought the shallow Victorian roof gave the interior "a curiously rigid appearance." The first recorded priest was instituted in 1257; the parish marked 750 years of that in 2007, the same year a new nave roof reopened the top of the tower arch.

Hill, river and onward routes

The village sits on the highest hill east of Norwich, between Lingwood, Brundall and Blofield, with the Yare along its southern edge. Domesday recorded seven households and the woodland that probably gave the place its name, "stump grove." Lingwood station, about two kilometres off and step-free but unstaffed, is on the Wherry Line between Norwich and Great Yarmouth; the Green Line 16/16A bus serves Strumpshaw, though it's worth checking the current stop before you travel. For a longer day out, Fairhaven Woodland and Water Garden at South Walsham has miles of trails and a private broad, and Norwich and its cathedral lie to the west.

Listen at the Tower Hide

Come in late spring and stand still by the Tower Hide for a while. You may hear a bittern before you see one, if you see one at all.