From a boozer to the Norfolk Broads: a riverside walk to The Ship, Reedham

A tiny railway halt is the gateway to an idyllic stroll ending at a flower-shrouded pub

Berney Arms is one of England’s most remote railway stations. You can only get to this stretch of the Norfolk Broads by train, boat or a long walk. It’s 25 minutes’ train ride from Norwich, but only two trains stop most days, and I’ve never seen anyone else getting off. Outside the train window, a roe deer steps delicately through green marshes and an egret stands poised by the water. The strange wild beauty is what keeps me coming back. This time I’m arriving with my husband on the 7.36am train from Norwich to walk along the River Yare to Reedham. We head through into the first carriage, the only one that fits next to the tiny station.

There’s an immediate burst of loud, electronic chirruping from a Cetti’s warbler in the reeds as the train pulls away. Heading over soggy meadows towards Norfolk’s tallest drainage mill, we are quickly immersed in a wide, watery landscape. The air is alive with birds: the joyous sliding scales of sedge warblers and noisy peewits from lapwings flapping over the fields. The Broads national park is Britain’s largest protected wetland area and a quarter of the UK’s rarest species live here. Reclaimed from the sea more than four centuries ago, these grazing marshes are now lower than sea level and need protection from the higher tides and longer droughts of a changing climate.