Waldringfield is a small village situated on the west bank of the River Deben estuary. It is four miles from the historic market town of Woodbridge and eight miles from Ipswich. The village is surrounded by farmland and lies within the Suffolk Coasts and Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB).

The Deben Estuary is beautiful, its banks relatively unspoilt by development.

Waldringfield is the only riverside settlement of any size between Felixstowe Ferry and Woodbridge. It is small, well-confined and reasonably unobtrusive when viewed from the river.

The village consists of some 225 dwellings of which a number are holiday homes.

In addition to the pub/restaurant and the boatyard, businesses in the parish include a general builder, a garage, three farms, an 18 hole golf-course with clubhouse and various home-based businesses. The general store became unviable and closed in 1998 and the plan to replace it with a village shopping club has not proved possible. A demolition company has premises at Waldringfield Heath and nearby, numerous business starter units have been created from redundant pig-farm outbuildings.

A new village hall was built in 2002 with the aid of a substantial grant from the Millennium Fund and this now houses a part time Post Office a couple of lunchtimes a week. The parish also has tennis courts, a sailing club, a children’s playground and Church Field which was recently donated to the parish as a recreational area by the late Tom Waller.

The village has an overwhelming desire to protect all aspects of the countryside and for the village not to develop further or to encroach on the surrounding area. Weekends, light evenings and school holidays all attract visitors, with numbers peaking in the warmer weather from Spring to Autumn, sometimes causing problems with traffic levels.

The Fairway Committee manage the moorings in the stretch of river in the immediate vicinity of the village. There is currently a waiting list for moorings as they are very popular, this being one of the few places on the river where a shingle beach provides easy access between water and land, however there is no public access  for the launching of boats as it is served by a private slipway. Permission to use this must be obtained from the owners, Waldringfield Sailing Club.

Waldringfield has a very rich wildlife. This is because it includes a stretch of the tidal river estuary, with important areas of salt marsh, mudflats and riverside grassland. This provides habitats for many species of plants, birds and mammals. The river has been designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI).

In 1988 the Deben Valley, including most of the Parish of Waldringfield, was designated an Environmentally Sensitive Area (ESA) in order to encourage the preservation of the traditional farming landscape, with its modest-sized fields bounded by hedges punctuated with mature oak trees, and to promote the survival of increasingly rare habitats such as heathland and woodland. This designation came too late to save Waldringfield Heath (most of which was ploughed up after WW2), and some of our ancient hedges. This Heath is now under further threat from development into a housing estate for some 2000 houses.