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"Full of Eastern promise" says the Evening Standard

The Norfolk Broads are enjoying a revival - and one rural retreat is as 'local Norfolk' as you'll find.

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The Broad House Hotel has a lot going for it. The Norfolk Broads, for starters. The Broads were ever so popular in the Thirties but since the Seventies they've rather lost out to more fashionable bits of East Anglia. But a revival is underway. This particular hotel has its own bit of Broad so it's good for those times when the waterways are closed to commercial boats for bird-protection reasons. Perfect for twitchers, then.

It also has its own boat for hire: the Lola has hosted the Church Times (on tour to take in 15 pre-Reformation churches in a single day - Norfolk is full of them), the Ordnance Survey team on a brainstorming session, and a hen party. My own tour came with a huge hamper picnic. By the way, did you know that the Norfolk Broads are man-made, an unintended consequence of medieval peat-digging trenches? You do now.

The hotel is eight miles from Norwich and is as local in its operation as you can hope for. The food, obviously - milk comes from a dairy down the road, meat is from the local farm shop, the partridge for dinner is shot in the neighbourhood, most of the veg are from the garden and the soap is Norfolk lavender. More remarkably, the staff are local - with the exception of the owners, Philip and Caroline Search, who are blow-ins in Norfolk terms but then in this county you've barely made it after three decades. If you travel by train, someone will pick you up from Wroxham station. You might get Philip himself in his Fifties Bentley. But bear in mind that Stagecoach trains, the main operator, can be scarily expensive unless you book weeks ahead.

Another good thing about this place is the policy on children. It doesn't allow them in the restaurant after 8pm. This allows families with children to use a private dining room - it has three - so that infants can behave as badly as they like. I can't tell you what a relief that is, given how my smaller child carried on at breakfast. The owners have a boy of their own, Hhenry, so they have your interests at heart.

I would say more about the food but the new chef was due to arrive the week after I visited. I can at least tell you that it's local and seasonal, which everyone claims to be but in this case is true. The simpler dishes work best - the fine roast partridge with potatoes mashed with cabbage, the roast topside of beef. I hope the new man plays it straight. Breakfast is excellent - fine fat sausages, good smoked haddock with poached egg, well-made porridge with, if you like that sort of thing, a spoon of cream or whisky.

Broad was, until the present owners bought it a couple of years ago, a handsome private home - part Queen Anne - owned by local landowners, the Traffords. Apparently old Mrs Trafford advised on the makeover and occasionally wanders into the garden. The decorative effect is classy but homely - there's a fire and a middlebrow selection of books in the library, including for my purposes a run of Noddys. All the bedrooms are different - a couple come with a four-poster. They overlook either the meadow fringed with oaks - the place has 24 acres - or the kitchen garden.

This being rural Norfolk, it would be fibbing to say the local attractions are close - but those like Bewilderwood, a forest theme park which children adore, is a short drive away and the hotel will get you there, or to the children's farm nearby or to the umpteen stately homes roundabout. And there's lots to be said for a good walk.

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