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

Oulton Broad

Monday 19 August 2002. Having left Lowestoft, we travelled round about two miles to Oulton Broad where our first job was to have a spot of lunch.

Oulton Broad is one of the famous Norfolk Broads - though really it is more correct to call it a Suffolk Broad. The Broads (a neat way of getting around the county problem) were thought to be natural features until the 1960s when it was proved that they were the result of peat workings in medieval times. Local monasteries had excavated them, selling the peat for fuel - for burning on fires basically - to local communities. Norwich Cathedral alone took 320,000 tonnes a year.

At some point sea levels rose and flooded the excavations. Bad news for Pete and Doug, who were shovelling in the pit that day, but at least their names were and will be remembered... Windpumps, often mistaken by visitors as windmills and dykes were hastily constructed but the flooding continued until the area looked like that of today with broad lakes, reed beds, marshes and groups of young men falling overboard from boats whilst totally bladdered.

The area became known for boating holidays quite early. Small yachts were available for hire from 1878, Harry Blake opened an agency for yachting holidays in 1908 and the familiar firm Hoseasons made an appearance shortly after World War II. Boats on the Broads these days vary from preserved old trading wherries, to small day-hire boats like those pictured in the foreground, all the way to modern electric cruisers as the Broads Authority is continually adding charging points at mooring places.

At the east end of Oulton Broad is Mutford Lock which links the freshwater Broad to the saltwater Lake Lothing. The lake stretches through Lowestoft and then opens to the sea.

Looking across the lock gates to the Wherry Inn, named after the large sailed trading vessels. All other boats on the Broads must give way to sailing vessels as they don't have accelerators or brakes and whether they can dodge you depends almost exclusively on the whims of the wind and your skill or stupidity whichever applies.

Depending on the direction the wind is blowing it is often the case that sailing boats can only progress along the rivers by tacking to zig-zag across the width of the river. We had booked a boat ourselves, but not for this day - that joy was still to come. For now we sat and relaxed waiting for the afternoon opening of a nearby transport museum. Which we will see in the next article!

Great Yarmouth 2002 Index