Afloat on Wroxham Broad

Friday 23 August 2002. This is the last day of our holiday before heading for home in the morning. As such Miss Franny needs to take a last look at the shops and market, just in case there's a shop or market stall that we have missed during the week. I dutifully tagged along uncomplainingly, casting a wistful glance in the window of the guitar shop as we whizzed past on the way to marvel at a slightly different shade or design of shoe...

We got away by lunchtime and by 1:30 in the afternoon parked the car a stone's throw from the water's edge at Wroxham.

Wroxham Broad is my favourite place to "mess about in a boat". Together with nearby Hoveton this is acknowledged as the capital of the Norfolk Broads. Wroxham itself is a small attractive village, famous for almost every shop being called Roy's - he came, he saw, he traded...

Hundreds of small boats can be hired for the day or half-day here and for the less adventurous, there are large cruisers and a showboat that you can take a ride on for an hour or so out through the channels to Wroxham Broad itself that runs parallel to the River Bure.

I wasn't really holding out much hope of being able to find a boat available at the time we got there, but we approached the empty landing stage of one boat hire place, asked when we would be able to take one out and the owner turned me, pointing at a boat just coming back to the landing stage. Result!

There's a lovely picturesque road bridge over the waterway here that would-be sailors love to go under, confident that they can cruise for half a day and then come back the same way to go under it again. However the River Bure does connect with the sea not too far away and the sea has this habit of following tidal protocols so that larger boats often return to find the "bridge is lower than it was...!" [CRUNCH!]

In such a small boat we were unlikely to have this problem with rising tides but never-the-less I prudently enquired before we left and was assured that we would be ok if we kept to the centre of the channel - which might entail waiting for any boats coming the other way to pass first.

Here, one of the larger passenger-carrying cruisers comes past, waving people lining the sides. One little boy wasn't waving. "Our Jimmy's always had a weak stomach..." his mum said. "Oh, he's not doing so bad though..." commented his dad as an aggrieved "Oy!" came from the kayak below...

Wroxham Broad itself has the aspect of a large lake covering 85 acres to a depth of a mere 4ft, 4 inches (1.3 metres). As described earlier when we were at Oulton Broad, the lake is actually a flooded basin created by medieval peat digging. It is seperated from the River Bure by a narrow island which allows boating access to either end of the Broad. This was being eroded and eventually it had to be built up ten years later which had the effect of increasing the birdlife population by quite a significant amount, including the return of kingfishers to the area. It also led to the discovery of a World War II hand grenade dredged up during the work which had to be detonated by the Bomb Disposal Squad...

"Is it hard to drive?" Miss Franny wanted to know so I insisted she sit in the driving seat for a spell. She was fine until I moved to back of the boat to take this photo.

"We are coming to a corner! What do I do?" Boats do not respond immediately to the turn of the wheel. It takes a second or so before the play of the water on the rudder begins to turn the boat. To people used to driving cars, this can cause them to panic slightly and wrench the wheel further round so that when the boat does start to answer the rudder, there's a dramatic swing that can put you into the path of something large and substantial. So I took over.

It was time to start our return back to the boatyard anyway. We got to the bridge, I took the centre path and with a sense of a job well done as befits the former Registrar of a nautical college, I smacked the boat hard against the jetty and hurriedly remembered to return the throttle to neutral...

Great Yarmouth 2002 Index

Working at The Nautical College Fleetwood

Having already written a whole string of articles on my final job before retiring, I should go back, if not to the very beginning, then to the start of my time in the Post-16 Education Sector. I had already spent a year and a half working in the District Education Offices in Blackpool when I was seconded to the Nautical College at Fleetwood to act as Deputy Registrar and Finance Officer. This was in September 1985.

Not that the work entailed a lot of this, but it's a bit more interesting than photos of an office... The college was fairly small as Further Education colleges go. There were just two academic departments: Maritime Studies and Marine Electronics. One dealt with basic seaman skills all the way up to a Masters certificate - i.e. becoming qualified as a Captain. It included navigation, ropework, sailing and all the other skills necessary to keep a ship safe at sea or on any body of water including rivers and canals. Marine Electronics dealt with radio procedure and maintenance, radar and probably lots of other stuff I didn't get to know about.

There was a huge simulator of a ship's bridge where students had to navigate into and out of harbours, with or without visuals on screens before them. Without screens simulated sailing in fog... Down on Fleetwood Beach was a weird little building - currently at time of writing up for sale I gather - raised on stilts and full of working radar monitors. (I'm not at all sure they are still inside!)

In addition, at the mouth of the River Wyre was this small platform where students either already or wishing to work in the Offshore platform industry could undergo training on safety procedures, a certificate on which was a requirement to work on oil and gas rigs. New workers took a 5-day course which included a day's fire-fighting training with Lancashire Fire Brigade and existing workers had to renew their certificate periodically by taking a shorter 3-day course. The courses also included a simulation where a mock helicopter fuselage was plunged underwater, rolled over and then they had to escape - literally.

There were a number of different lifeboats and fast rescue craft. FOSC-5 (the fifth boat on the platform run by the Fleetwood Offshore Survival Centre) was a jet-engined rigid hull with a rather satisfying roar and a certain amount of WHUMFF once in the water!

It cut a dash and when on manouvres particularly during the summer holiday season it invariably drew a crowd of onlookers.

There were also some rather more basic craft. Here a fully enclosed lifeboat (you don't want to be in an open one if a rig is on fire...) is the subject of an exercise with FOSC-5 standing by in case it is needed.

The college also had this small ship. The Lancastrian was built originally as a yacht for a millionaire. It turned out to be a bit top heavy for him and rolled about quite a bit much to the discomfort of students and any visiting dignitaries who might be given a "treat" ride on her. She is shown out of the water having had stabilisers fitted. Made no difference really...

This is what the other 99.99% of my job entailed. However I did find a room full of unused Commodore Pet computers each with a fabulously luxurious 32K - yes K not MB, not GB - of memory and I wrote a piece of financial software on one which saved the data onto cassette tape and which led to the college buying a larger machine (125K whoopee!) and my career in computerised Management Information Systems got started.

Work Index

Moonlight Cruise to Limone

Wednesday 30 June 2003. We are on the fifth article already of this holiday series about our trip to Lake Garda and we are still on the first day!.

We had joined a Leger group, though we had flown out from the UK to Verona instead of going all the way by coach. Tonight after our evening meal we were going to have a moonlight cruise on the lake. The moon wasn't quite out yet but it would be later...

Limone is the first ferry stop south of Riva, although many ferries call at Torbole first on the opposite top corner of the lake. We were not on one of the usual ferries this night though. We are on a fast boat - Speedy 1. Speedy 2 is picking up another Leger group from somewhere... Between Riva and Limone is this small inlet where a river flows down from the mountains into the lake. When I say "down" I mean it falls in a dirty great waterfall not far into the inlet. However it is so dark in there that you are lucky to see it. So I've brightened up the bit with the waterfall in it on this photo. Even so I wouldn't blame you for not being able to recognise it as such...

Limone sul Garda is half built at the bottom of the cliff face and half excavated out of it! Its name comes from the crops of lemons that are grown and harvested during the summer months. There is a summer population of 10,000. In winter with no visitors and very few lemons, this dwindles to just one thousand.

We landed and are to have a stop off here for an hour or so. A chance to explore and also a chance for it to go dark and for the moon to come out! Speedy 2 arrived so then there were two groups of us frantically trying to find our guides and/or members of our own party...

Half of them seemed to have wandered off anyway and either some of them had become very fluent in Italian and German or some residents and random tourists had intermingled anyway. Time to shrug shoulders and find our own way about! No sooner were the shoulders shrugged than a lost French couple interrupted us to see if we knew where they were meant to be... I pointed helpfully to the opposite side of the lake.

This was the excavated bit. A street of shops had been hewed out of the rock at the foot of the cliffs. This place had a rather weighty ceiling and we walked quickly just in case...

There was of course, a fair amount of climbing to do also! We had been told there was a church and for some reason decided to find it.

In any case I wanted to climb up a little in order to get some photos of the lake and lights of its towns from a position slightly less populated by other people taller than me!

We found the church and began to regret walking up the hill as it turned out to be decidedly uninteresting and closed. The locals would be very unlucky if a horde of vampires suddenly descended... Are vampires repelled by dress shops? Or is it just me...?

We climbed as high as we felt we had time for and lo and behold here is our guide. She had charged off up the hill to get away from the more stupid half of Speedy 1's passengers who, no matter how many times she had told them before landing, followed her to ask "What time do we have to be back at the boat and where is it?" When no stupid questions came from us she was quite happy to take our photo!

And before long it was time to find our boat again. There were now two of them of course and Speedy 2 looked identical to ours. My trained eye however spotted the name Speedy 1 painted in large letters on the bow of the boat and we climbed up to the open top deck to get to know a few of our fellow passengers a bit better.

There was Kell and his wife Denise who were teaching in England for a year on an elongated stay away from their home in New Zealand and a long-haired genial chap called Andy, a few years older than us with his wife Margaret. He somehow got us into a conversation about the 1950s/60s comedian Freddie Frinton who I just about remembered from childhood. Freddie's act saw him playing a most convincing and hilarious drunk on-stage and he had a prop cigarette which was broken in the middle so that it dangled downwards and swung about from his mouth as he talked.

It was by now pitch dark on the lake and at the front of an open deck on a speedboat, we were just a tad from freezing to death. So by the time we were back at Riva it was with a bit of relief that we got back onto terra firma and headed for the hotel.

Lake Garda and Northern Italy, 2003 Index

On The River Seine

Sunday 30 May 1999. After Versailles, the coach took us back to the hotel where we thankfully changed out of our wet clothes and got ready quickly to be taken back into Paris where we were to go on a boat trip on the Seine before going back to the same restaurant as the previous night for our meal.

The boat seemed enormous, and was certainly much bigger than those that I have ridden in up English rivers. It was fairly full when we boarded and we sat in the centre aisle at the front, near the young girl who was giving the commentary in four different languages.

When she stopped after French, English, German and Spanish I raised my eyebrows and said "Japanese?" which caused her to burst into giggles and say "Non!"

Holding the camera out, I took this of myself - expecting to see a bit more of the boat actually, but just look at that muscle!!! What? It's my forearm??? Oh... I thought it was a bit hairy... Alright girls, alright, yes you can be in the picture... Wow, a moustache and clip-on sunglasses - those were the days!

We got back to find the coach waiting for us, but it was warm again and we were all waiting until the last possible minute to get on board! The Eiffel Tower in the background shows the location of the landing stage for the boat trips. The trip had lasted quite a while and it was very pleasant sitting there watching the sights go by! The coach set off again, taking us on almost the last leg of our Paris trip.

We were now heading for Montmarte and the Sacre Coeur, the artists' haunt and one of the most romantic parts of Paris. My sketch pad hadn't been touched during the holiday as there was no time to stop long enough anywhere, but after Versailles, I had looked at the sodden mess of it and threw it away...

Return to Paris and Versailles 1999 Index

Rhine Cruise from St Goarhausen to Boppard

Saturday 7 December 2019. We are on a weekend trip with Leger to the Rhine Christmas Markets and our first day in Germany is about to kick off with a boat trip along the Rhine.

We take the coach to St Goarhausen, where we are to pick up a river cruise up the Rhine to the town of Boppard. Driver Les is coming with us whilst Driver Ian takes the ferry across the river and will pick us up in Boppard.

St Goar, seen from St Goarhausen. The Rhine has quite a strong current as can be seen by the foaming of the water as it hits the bouys that mark the deep water channel.

St Goarhausen. We don't have time to wander far as we wait for our cruise ship to come. We watch as Ian takes the coach onto the car ferry. Bridges are few and far between at this part of the river. St Goarhausen sits just north of the famous Lorelei Rock.

Barges are still a major way of transporting goods. They carry the crew's cars at the rear so that once the barge is delivered, the crew can go home.

Having loaded, the car ferry makes its way across to St Goar, taking Ian and the coach with it. We watch him safely to the other side and then he sets off north towards the town of Boppard where we shall end up once our boat makes an appearance.

Lorelei appears on a number of signs and motifs around St Goarhausen. She has a carved monument too. The legend is she was on her way to a nunnery, betrayed by a lover and accused of witchcraft. She saw the rock and asked permission to climb it, whereupon she threw herself into the water to her death. The tale is a fiction dating only from 1801, but has taken on a cult-like status with many believing it to be an ancient folklore.

Ah yes... Apologies if this made you reel back in horror, but this is me, complete with tea cosy hat preferring the somewhat bracing fresh air on the open deck at the back of the saloon onboard our ship the Loreley Star. Loreley is the German spelling for the tragic spurned lover of our tale. Somehow most depictions of her seem to have her without clothes. It must not have been the middle of December then, is all I can think! Apparently the Lorelei Rock juts out into the water which causes a humming noise as the river hits it. Before the Lorelei tale started the noise was said to be caused by dwarfs who lived within the rock. They have now been forgotten about as they don't look as good in the nude on signposts and shop fronts...

Even in the flat and somewhat dull light of a December morning, the scenery hints at the splendours that summer light would lend to it. Castles are common as muck around here. They perch high above the river on bends and craggy bits of rock. I kept an eye on the turret windows so that I might spot any imprisoned princesses with very long hair. I could do with some of that...

The Onderneming IV, a general cargo ship, was built in 2005 and is 135 meters long, sailing under the Netherlands flag.

Unless there was a sign large enough to read from the centre of the river, I had no way of identifying the villages and towns we passed. Every church had a ball directly under the cross on top of the spire. These hold the plans of the church, enabling it to be rebuilt to the original plan should it be destroyed by fire or war.

Even where there was a sign I wasn't exactly sure whether that was the name of the town or village or was marking the private mooring of a hotel.

We reach Boppard and have to leave our ship, Loreley Star. She was built in 1999 and has two decks with a further open top deck. She takes up to 600 passengers and has a length of 50.2 meters with a width or beam of 11.2 meters.

Return to Magical Markets of the Rhine Valley Index Page

Hasting to Hastings

Monday 3 June 2019. We had motored down to Eastbourne on the previous day and booked into a hotel for a few days. Today after the 300 mile drive we were to take it easy and we caught a local bus to Hastings.

Hastings wasn't the bus's final destination so once we recognised Hastings seafront we hopped off the bus and walked the rest of the way to the far end of town. It was glorious weather. In fact we got more suntanned than we had done on the Mediterranean last month!

Above this cliff is William the Conqueror's castle. Below it a large unit boarded up and spoiling the effect of the classical feel to the buildings behind. William of Normandy actually landed a few miles west of here in Pevensey, but the town has come to be synonymous with the famous battle - which also wasn't fought here... A funicular railway affords a less strenuous way up the cliff to the castle, but we left that for another visit.

By the time you reach the eastern side of Hastings you are approaching the old town and the Georgian rows of hotels and guest houses make way to less uniform and somewhat more varied and interesting buildings. Weatherboarding covers many of them and it is here that you will find pubs, restaurants and fish and chip shops with the odd seafood stall thrown in for good measure.

There's a bit of competition amongst the buildings to be the oldest of some type or trade. One is labelled "Britain's Oldest Brewer". This turned out to be more the boast of the brewery supplying the pub than the pub itself. Shepherd Neame Brewery was founded way back in 1698, owns more than 320 pubs and exports beer to more than 35 countries. But here I must point out that I'm not talking about The Dolphin pub pictured here, which is a Free House and just looked nice!

Standing on the shingle beach at the eastern end of Hastings are these fishermens' net drying huts. Tall enough to allow nets to be hung up and dried they can also be used for mending nets.

Not to be outdone by the cliff towards the west, this end of Hastings also has a cliff which has its own East Hill Lift funicular railway. I do love a good funicular. They are rare enough to not have become too familiar and any railway that has "fun" as part of its descriptive name can't be bad!

Talking of railways... Amongst the grounded fishing boats and drying nets on the borderline between beach and concrete we found preparations ongoing to ready the miniature train along a stretch of the seafront. Another steam locomotive was poking its nose out of a nearby shed and a diesel locomotive was partnering this one, which must be a visiting engine as it is not included on the firm's website.

Amongst the net drying sheds are the equipment and vessels, current and past, of Hastings' fishing fleet. Stacks of crab and lobster pots are lined up amidst tangles of old fraying ropes. Boats and shells of boats lie on chocks or leaning on the beach with sun-faded paintwork. Bits of marine engines lie waiting for someone to need a spare part.

Two ladies were sitting, sketching in books. They were together but were sitting so far apart to get different viewpoints that I wasn't sure until I asked. They had driven out for the day from home around 20 miles away. "I hate doing boats..." one confided. I generally feel the same. They are very hard shapes to get right.

We said goodbye to the artists and, with my own sketchbook still tucked under my arm, moved away from the possibilities of the object-rich beach and towards the shop-rich streets of the old town...

Before the advent of national housing regulations, architects and builders, most towns were a delightful hotch-potch of different building design and appearance. You can still see this along older streets, such as the main routes into and out of towns, as building styles change every or every few houses. Now most of us live on estates with just three or four designs to share between the scores or even hundreds of homes.

Ye Olde Pumphouse still has its old pump. It is mounted on the external wall just behind the swinging pub sign. I can think of three reasons why this might be the case: (1) it was thought it would be easier to water the hanging flower baskets; (2) it was sometimes necessary to douse the more drunken customers in order to sober them sufficiently to walk home; or (3) it was originally somewhere much more sensible and was only put up in its lofty position when the landlord woke up to a tap on the door. "Very nice, but can it go over the sink instead?"

This street (George Street) is full of antiques and artisan shops, old timbered pubs and buildings and the odd emporium catering to some dwindling specialist function, trade or habit.

Speaking of which, we followed a sign for cream teas only to find that the small pot of clotted cream that I received with some misgivings, once opened had more empty space than clotted cream... And two tiny individual breakfast jam portions for two whopping big scones? Pah! Head much further west and get a decent cream tea would be my advice.

We spent a bit of time on a bench whilst I do a spot of sketching myself. The little railway runs behind me as I'm doing this. At intervals I jump out of my skin at the horn blast of the diesel loco or cough and choke in the smoke of the steam loco...

Then we re-trace our steps along George Street for a second look and head towards the railway station where we can catch our return bus.

Return to Eastbourne and Sussex Index