About

A cycle route that takes in miniature railways, reed beds, charming villages, a craft centre and the radar museum at Neatishead. There’s also the option to cross the River Bure at Horning and join the Ranworth Broad route if you’re lucky enough to find the foot ferry running. This route is entirely on road, so any bike will be enjoyable.

Starting point: Start at Hoveton alongside the narrow-gauge tracks of the Bure Valley Railway. Turn at the first road crossing, taking a narrow back lane to a gated level crossing over the ‘real’ railway and then onto the crossroads where the Wroxham Barns Craft Centre sits. Here, you’ll find all sorts of small craft shops, a deli, a farmyard cafe and a junior farm. Head straight on, carefully crossing the main Cromer road through a small wood towards Butchers Common. 

Skirting the west end of Neatishead you will be met by the sight of the military signal station. Then pass a church with a flint cobble tower, mediaeval wooden litch gate and the beautiful vicarage. Curling back around into Barton Turf itself, don’t miss the left-hand detour down to the staithe landing with its moorings, boat house and boat yard opposite ‘The Heater’, a floating triangular island at the head of Barton Broad.

This is the largest of the local Broads and is a wonderful, wildlife-rich environment where water birds and otters mix with all sorts of craft from stand up paddle boards to sailing dinghies and traditional wherries. Current users are also following in the wake of naval hero Lord Horatio Nelson, who started his sailing career here well before the battle of Trafalgar,while his elder sister lived at Barton Hall.

Head south down the narrow lane of Hall Road, where you’ll roll along past the traditional homes of ‘Millionaires Row’ on the north side of Neatishead. Then you close the ‘head’ of the route, looping right round along the south side of the village and on towards Irstead.

Here you will glide alongside ancient woods with glimpses of the Broad and its little creeks, past gatehouses for hidden manors and into the hamlet of Irstead with its scattered thatched cottages. The church is essentially unchanged since the 15th century and still has many mediaeval wall paintings and carvings, making it a must-visit on the roll down to the moorings where the River Ant winds south from Barton Broad.

Retracing your tracks back from the moorings, the route then parallels the river with views across the fenland marshes to the drainage windmills, before cycling under Alderfen Broad - a Norfolk Wildlife Trust Site of Special Scientific Interest - and heading west back towards Hoveton.

The two military masts you passed earlier are now put into clear context - the defensive ‘pillbox’ machine gun turrets, radar domes, dishes, masts and large green buildings of the RAF Air Defence Radar Museum. Set up secretly in 1941, Neatishead used mobile radar arrays to direct RAF fighters against German aircraft attacking the east coast. It gave British pilots a crucial advantage, and the site soon received the latest fixed radar systems and a reinforced control room dubbed the ‘Happidrome’ from where aircraft operations were controlled over a huge area. By the 1950s, Neatishead was the control centre for all Cold War air defence over the south of England, as well as trialling and developing new early warning equipment, and the ‘Happidrome’ was replaced by a nuclear bomb-proof underground bunker. The site stayed operational until 1991 and the award-winning museum tells the whole fascinating story, along with unique exhibits from Neatishead. The famous nearby fighter airfield of RAF Coltishall is brought to life by the volunteer staff, many of whom served at Neatishead.    

From the radar museum, you can take several directions. South will take you to Horning, where you can hopefully take the small ferry over the River Bure to Ranworth and join the Ranworth Broad route (check holiday operating times on the Horning Ferry Facebook page). Or you can use the ‘Three Rivers Way’ cycle path that runs alongside the A1062. The route then takes you north through the woods of the ‘Bewilderwood’ tree themed fun park, across the Cromer Road and then along the boundary of local arts event centre Hoveton Hall onto the Marriott’s Way railway path back into Hoveton.

See the full route here.