There is a working miniature model railway running inside the Railway Inn, which is the last pub standing in a village that used to have four. It opened in 1868 next to the old railway line, put up by Truman's of London, and it has outlasted the line, the station, and the three other pubs. The Hare closed in 2005, the Plough in 1969, the King William in 2009. So when you want a pint in Docking, this is where you go, and it turns out to be a good place to end up.
The Railway does Sunday roasts, lasagne, fish and chips, and a hunters chicken that one reviewer called absolutely mouth-watering. There are three handpumps, two of them guest ales, plus a beer garden and a pool table. Dogs are welcome. It runs at 4.4 on TripAdvisor across nearly 500 reviews, which for a village pub is a lot of people bothering to say something nice. The place calls itself a locals pub and means it.
The other food happening in the village is the market in the W.E. Ripper Memorial Hall on the High Street, which brings in produce, flowers, fresh fish and meat, and craft stalls selling bread, jam and toiletries. The morning cafe there serves what is advertised as the famous Docking Bacon Butty. Wagg's built a proper bakery in 1952 but it's gone now; for a fuller high street, Burnham Market is about five miles east with a butcher, baker, fishmonger and chemist.
Docking sits high. At 82.7 metres it's one of the highest villages in Norfolk, a settlement on a chalk rise with its church tower visible for miles and thirteen lanes fanning out across open arable land. The height is also why it has a nickname. Since at least the reign of James I it's been "Dry Docking," because sitting up here it had no water except rainwater, and the water table was a long way down. They built dew ponds. In the 1760s they sank a single well 230 feet deep and sold water at a farthing a bucket, the farthing paying the man who worked the windlass. The well served until 1936, when the mains finally arrived.
The church is St Mary the Virgin, the oldest building here and the only Grade II* one, with an 80-foot tower from around 1415. Its font is the thing to see: octagonal, late medieval, carved with the four evangelists, eight female saints, and nude angels representing the souls of the righteous. One of the saints is St Apollonia, patron of dentists, shown holding a pair of forceps. The faces were mutilated at the Reformation. This is the font where St Henry Walpole, born in the village in 1558 and later a martyr, was baptised.
For walking, the Roman-road Peddars Way passes close by, gentle and flat, with the Norfolk Coast Path and the beaches at Hunstanton, Brancaster and Holme within a short drive. The Lynx 33 bus runs from King's Lynn through Docking to Hunstanton; King's Lynn is the nearest railhead now.
The village sign shows Docca, the Anglo-Saxon founder nobody can quite verify, unveiled in 1937 and still keeping watch over the top of the hill.
