The Wherryman's Web

“That do flood, that Hardley Flood…”

2012-01-22T14:45:00.001Z

THE Wherryman’s Way wasn’t impassable at Hardley Flood today, but you certainly needed decent boots and a sense of adventure. This particular stretch of the walk sees the Flood lap up on one side of a narrow path while the River Chet runs close by on the other. Occasionally time, tide and wind conspire to make them all but join. Today was one of those days. I gave up when one particular boardwalk was completely submerged. But I later met a regular dog walker who’d made it through and said he’d yet to be defeated, come rain or shine. It’s one of the many attractions of Hardley Flood: you might turn up and see glistening mud and thousands of wading birds, you might see a good impression of the North Sea. It was the wind that was doing the damage today. On the Chet, two swans gave up trying to swim against it and flew off downwind. Meanwhile on the Flood, winds gusting to 40mph were whipping the water into white crests as it overlapped its banks. As one old boy once told me, “That do flood, that Hardley Flood”.

Looking after the Wherryman’s Way

2012-01-14T11:09:00.001Z

THE BROADS Authority says it’s keen to do its bit to maintain sections of the Wherryman’s Way – but it can’t do the lot. That’s the tenor of a letter to Loddon Parish Council over the thorny business of who should look after the footpaths. We all know the background. Loddon feels a poorly looked-after WW will put off much-needed tourists. But Norfolk County Council has less money to spend and has cut back accordingly. The county instead proposes a Norfolk Trails Partnership – encouraging business and community groups to help out too. Now the chief executive of the Broads Authority has written to Loddon giving his views:

“The Broads Authority is keen to work with the county council through the Norfolk Trails Partnership and contribute to the maintenance of the Wherryman’s Way. However the Authority has limited resources to undertake maintenance works on public rights of way and is not in a position to undertake all the maintenance required on the route. The Authority therefore taken the approach of identifying sections of path that provide access to local facilities from sites managed by the Broads Authority for future maintenance. In the Loddon area we have already committed to maintaining the easy access path which runs from our mooring at Chedgrave Common to Pitts Lane Chedgrave as this section of the Wherryman’s Way provides direct access to Loddon and Chedgrave.”

* Thanks to Loddon Parish Clerk Christine Smith for passing the letter on.

Will it be the path less travelled?

2011-12-15T21:21:00.001Z

LODDON parish council has written to the leader of Norfolk County Council complaining about the state of the Wherryman’s Way footpath. Councillors say they’ve noticed a decline in the standards of maintenance along their stretch of the 35 mile walk. “Loddon is one of the main points on the footpath’s route and it is noted that the tourists using the path bring much needed trade to local businesses,” writes parish clerk Christine Smith. “The current inadequate level of maintenance will ultimately result in fewer visitors and a downturn in trade in the area, not to mention the disappointment of visitors who find the path in a poor and unusable condition.” Loddon goes on to tell Councillor Derrick Murphy that it’s preparing an audio guide for tourists. But …”this project will obviously be a waste of resources if the Wherryman’s Way path, which is a major attraction for visitors, is inadequately maintained.” The EDP reported in October that Norfolk County Council had agreed to cut spending on its 2,355 mile local rights-of-way network by more than £500,000.

From cupcakes to coffee: meet Loddon’s new deli girls

2011-12-08T21:29:00.001Z

CONGRATULATIONS to Natalie, Ginny and Tracey, pictured at the launch party of their new cafe/deli in Loddon on Tuesday evening. The shop will open its doors on Monday after a frantic six weeks which have seen a rather sterile former dentists’ surgery be completely transformed into a sassy, modern coffee shop complete with deli counter and cupcakes. It’s a wonderful addition to an already thriving Loddon high street. For the full story (and this photo, thanks Ben…) visit the loddon eye website.

Sunset on the Flood

2011-11-27T16:22:00.001Z

A WEEK on from the fog and it was a very different Chet Valley this Sunday evening. Visibility was perfect as the sun went down over Hardley Flood – which you can just make out to the left of this picture. Last week the thick mist muffled every sound. Tonight the squawk of the pheasants and the honk of the wildfowl seemed to carry for miles. I took this photo on a bridle path close to the ever-spooky Hardley Hall. Look one way and you see Hardley Flood – which used to be a mixture of arable land and copse until the great flood of 1953. Look the other and you can see for miles across the Yare Valley towards Buckenham, Cantley and Reedham on the north bank. The chimney at Cantley’s massive sugar factory keeps pumping it out. The wind wasn’t quite in our direction, but there was still a faint smell of sweet molasses in the air. It remains amazingly warm. It might be December next week, but it still feels like Autumn.

The Fog on the Chet is all mine, all mine

2011-11-20T17:02:00.001Z

A SOLID bank of mist hangs over the Chet Valley tonight, the dankest and clammiest I’ve seen in my eight years in Loddon. As ever the river escapes relatively lightly, it’s the marshes next door that really cop it. The damp exhausted my camera’s batteries within minutes, but I think this photo shows its density quite nicely: as though a huge eraser had rubbed out everything from the meadows to about 12 feet up. That’s the tower of Holy Trinity church just high enough to be seen. “I don’t like it,” shivered one dog walker emerging suddenly from its grasp. I did. Blackbirds chink-chinked their alarm calls continuously and the smell of wet autumn leaves hung heavy near the hedges, but it wasn’t cold. These are the last days of a wonderfully warm autumn. Winter will arrive soon enough.

Why Rosy Lee’s is one up on Claridges

2011-11-13T19:14:00.001Z

CONGRATULATIONS to Caroline Dwen of Rosy Lee’s in Loddon for making it into a national chart for the“30 Best Places For Tea”. In fact Rosy Lee’s storms in at number 7 on the list published in The Times yesterday. And which tearoom is at Number 8? Claridge’s of London of course. No seriously. “Beloved by Norfolk Broads boatsmen,” goes the Times blurb, “who flock here for home-made food served on mismatched china by the cheery lady owner. Everything is home cooked and she’ll even do you a kipper and poached egg for tea if you feel like it.” A cheery owner, all the more cheery as a result, no doubt. Well done Caroline.

Delays at the Loddon Swan

2011-11-02T15:06:00.001Z

HOPES that The Swan at Loddon would re-open this year have been dashed. Talking to guys on site today, it’s clear that the original December 1st deadline was way too optimistic. At the moment the man in charge of the project is reluctant to commit to a January or a even a February opening date. The steady stream of tradesmen keep discovering more complications. The good news is that they’re committed to doing the job properly. The bad news? This building hasn’t had anything like enough TLC for decades.

Loddon: The Swan to become a hotel.

2011-10-12T14:52:00.001+01:00

MORE details have emerged on plans for the important Swan site in the middle of Loddon. The new owner Justin Fenwick has submitted plans to build 2 three- or four- bedroomed houses between the pub and the bowling green as a way of funding what his architect calls “the rejuvenation of the hotel”. The Swan, I should add,is always referred to as a hotel rather than the pub we’ve been used to in recent years. The extensive outbuildings will remain and might be converted into four hotel rooms in time. Crucially the pub, sorry hotel, will become a free house, a move which will raise a cheer from most CAMRA-types. Those in the know argue that it’s often the pub group charging too much for both rent and beer that leads to pub closures. The letter submitted to South Norfolk council also makes clear that the Bowling Club can continue as normal and the alleyway through to Sale Court will survive. More details - including plans here:

* Earlier story here

Rockland: Business booms at Oxnead House

2011-10-12T11:53:00.001+01:00

AMID all the economic gloom, some cause for optimism on the Wherryman’s Way. Pia and Iain Saunders (pictured) launched their new holiday cottage business in Rockland St Mary in August. The three separate cottages within the grounds of Oxnead House seem to me, to be just what the WW needed in this part of the world. From the flat-screen tellies to the exposed wooden beams, the style is sleek and modern. And the good news is that the couple have been rushed off their feet since their new website went live. “We’ve had inquiries from all over the world,” said Pia. “We’re already really busy.” The Lodge, The Stable and The Barn occupy a large plot which looks down upon Rockland Broad from the corner of New Inn Hill and Green Lane. Green Lane is the way Wherryman’s Way walkers arrive in Rockland, having cut across fields from Wheatfen Broad in Surlingham. If you want to do the entire Wherryman’s Way in one stretch over a relaxing three days, you could do worse than make Oxnead House your first-night stop.

*Just to be clear Oxnead House is nowhere near the lost Broads village of Oxnead which lies close to Aylsham on the Bure. This one is very much Yare Valley.

Rockland New Inn: The Walkers look to stroll it

2011-10-09T19:35:00.001+01:00

STOP me if you’ve heard this one before, but welcome to the new guys at The New Inn at Rockland St Mary. Yes, yes I know there have been a few, but Mick and Paula Walker are pukka leaseholders and so should bring this Wherryman’s Way pub some much needed stability after a stop-start year. It’s a point not lost on Mick who thrusts a leaflet into my hand which says “we want to build on the hard work of the temporary managers and continue to put The New Inn back at the heart of the neighbourhood”. And who would want to take over a seasonal pub at the end of the season? Well this couple certainly make a virtue of it, explaining that it will give them time to talk to the locals, before they start dealing with the very different needs of summer tourists. In fact their first priority is to ask local people for their suggestions. (So email mick@newinnrockland.co.uk with your thoughts.)

Former management consultant Mick and nurse Paula both look very much at home behind the bar, so it’s something of a surprise to learn that they are first-timers, although they did spend five years in Ireland running a backpackers hostel/guesthouse. They first opened these doors on Thursday and will start serving food on Tuesday – Head Chef Robert is an integral part of their plans. A proper espresso machine for decent coffee and that new necessity wi-fi, should follow very soon. And it will certainly be a pub-full because three children will live here plus Spike the Yorkie and Milo the cat.

I was sorry to see the Walkers’ predecessors Alix and John go, and you can understand a certain amount of “here-we-go-again” cynicism from the average Rockland drinker, but Mick and Paula certainly talk a very good – and friendly - game. If we can help them through their first winter, they might just hang around for an awful lot longer. And that has to be good for the village, the tourists and those Wherryman’s Way walkers.

See Mick and Paula’s website here:

Sails and Sails: the Yare Navigation Race from Hardley Mill

2011-09-20T21:22:00.001+01:00

IT’S THE Yare Navigation Race on Saturday, the one day of the year when you can guarantee that sail rules the river. The event, organised by Coldham Hall Sailing Club, is open to river cruisers who race down to Breydon and back – the precise destination depends on time and tide. So where’s the best place to be a spectator? Ideally of course you would want to be between Coldham Hall and Breydon with a good high vantage point. …Somewhere perhaps like Hardley Mill says Mill chairman Richard Rockley:

“Our last event of this season takes advantage of our specially design viewing platform (also known as known as the mill) and the fantastic views it offers of the yachts,” he emails.

“Hopefully there will be a brisk wind. There was a sailing event from Cantley last weekend, watching some of the yachts tackling the wind on the bends close to the mill was at times both hair-raising and hilarious. As far as we could tell looking from the bank, there was no serious damage and no one was hurt but there were several close calls!”

Hardley Mill will be open between 10am and 4pm. Beers will be provided by the mighty Humpty Dumpty Brewery and there’s a barbecue between 1pm and 4pm. The folk quartet Rum Kelter will provide the soundtrack.

Remember though that there’s no public access by road. The best bet is to walk the mile or so from Hardley Staithe. Either that or design an entire Wherryman’s Way 35-miler around this annual classic. With the weather set fine, you could do a lot worse.

* Thanks to Richard for the photo, taken from you-know-where.

* New Big Sky Productions video of Hardley Mill here

Coldham Hall wins pub of the year award

2011-09-20T20:26:00.001+01:00

CONGRATULATIONS to the Coldham Hall Tavern at Surlingham for scooping a community pub of the year award from the local council. I well remember peering through the windows of this beautiful riverside building when it was closed, shabby and generally down at heel back in 2009. Stuck to the window was an A4 sheet of paper telling anyone who cared that the pub had been "repossessed by the landlord following forfeiture of the lease by peaceable re-entry". It seems a world away from the vibrant pub you walk into today. Natalie and George Linder (pictured) are the people who have transformed it. And now they’re celebrating both the award and a £1,000 cheque to help them organise a community bash. The judges said they were impressed by their use of “local food, local people and local ales”. That middle category is probably the key.

*Read about their opening day back in March 2010 here.

*Read the EDP article about this award here.

A poke around Polkey’s

2011-09-10T13:42:00.001+01:00

A QUICK shout from mills expert Alison Yardy. She and her colleague Amanda will be opening up Polkey’s Mill tomorrow between 1pm and 4pm. The old steam engine house next door will also be open for visitors. The mills form part of the unique Reedham Marshes Mill group which together comprise a complete history of Broads drainage mills. Basic windmill, more modern windmill, steam, diesel and electricity, they’re all here. Alison adds that she now opens them up twice a year, but are always open to requests for group visits on other occasions. Polkey’s Mill is – famously – in the middle of nowhere to the east of Reedham on the Wherryman’s Way. It obeys the first law of the WW too – the more out of the way the attraction, the better it is.

Wherryman’s Way–The Podcast

2011-09-08T21:37:00.001+01:00

YOU’VE walked the walk and with a bit of luck I’ve persuaded you to buy the book, so what’s next for Wherryman’s Way fans? Future Radio might just have provided the answer. All week they’ve run a special series of programmes looking at the Way. And they’re now available as downloadable podcasts. ..But if the word podcasts scares you just click here. And congratulations to Terry Lee, the man behind the project.

New holiday cottages for Rockland St Mary

2011-08-30T10:42:00.001+01:00

WHEN the Wherryman’s Way was created back in 2005, it was meant to create a brand for our part of the Broads. Wroxham and Horning could cater for the stag-do boys in their day boats, we’d look after the walkers and the cyclists, the birdwatchers and the canoeists. And it’s worked well. Hardley Mill got hundreds of thousands of pounds from Europe, at least partly because it could say it was on the WW. The medieval Langley Abbey was opened up to the public for the first time in centuries and a decent cafe graces the riverside at Reedham. There’s still room for more I’d say, but it’s been a cracking start.

So if we’ve got our new tourist attractions where are all those new tourists going to stay? Well, as of this week there’s a new kid on the block. Three holiday cottages have opened up at Oxnead House at Rockland St Mary. I haven’t looked round yet but I have met owners Ian and Pia Saunders. Certainly they “get” the whole Wherryman’s Way thing and certainly they’ve produced a very impressive website. (This photo of one of the three cottages is pinched from there.) It’s early days, but with a staithe and a pub, a broad and holiday cottages, Rockland is looking like the new unofficial capital of the Wherryman’s Way.

Rockland New Inn: the cover story

2011-08-25T22:17:00.001+01:00

CONGRATULATIONS to Alix and John at the New Inn in Rockland St Mary who have already celebrated their 1,000th cover, achieving this milestone in three weeks flat. They’re still managers rather than leaseholders, so we can’t get too excited, but fingers crossed. According to Alix, it’s mostly local bums on seats, which bodes well for the leaner winter months too. The sandwich board saying “no credit cards accepted” has been turned around to read “all major credit cards accepted”. Oh and my pint of Adnams tasted good. These are small but important signs of progress. A perfect Bank Holiday weekend venue I would have thought. These guys are definitely worth supporting.

* More on Alix and John here.

The Loddon Swan - a return to the glory days?

2011-08-15T21:02:00.001+01:00

BIG NEWS on the future of The Swan – the magnificent old coaching inn in the centre of Loddon . It has been bought by Justin Fenwick of Geldeston Hall who plans to keep it as a pub, but take it upmarket. I haven’t spoken to Mr Fenwick but his wife Marcia told me tonight that the plan is to give it a wine bar feel – and there will be food too. “The sort of place,”she told me, “where ladies will want to come for a cup of coffee”. It’s great news for a building which has looked increasingly down at heel since it closed back in September 2010. And it should be a boost for Loddon too – given that empty buildings drag the whole town down. Mrs Fenwick was keen to stress that it’s early days and the timescale is as yet uncertain. Two other quick facts: the bowling club are safe – they will be allowed to continue playing on the green behind the pub as they have done since time immemorial. And there are longer term plans to build single-storey accommodation for elderly people between the pub and the bowling green. More info when I get it.

* More on the recent history of this building here.

The Wherryman’s Way ..on Future

2011-08-09T21:17:00.001+01:00

LISTEN out for a new series on The Wherryman’s Way next month – on Future Radio. The station is doing a five-part look at the entire walk running from Monday September 5th till Friday September 9th. I was interviewed by their top man Terry Lee and I have to say he knew his stuff. He loves the WW and I’m sure that will be reflected in the series which will go out at noon every day. I’ve listened to the trailer ..which includes a short excerpt from me where I appear to have said that Billy Bluelight was “the puppet man of his day”. Is that allowed? Will the puppet man mind? We’ll see.

So who are Future Radio? They’re a community station based in West Norwich. I’m no expert, but the impression I got from visiting their studios was of an eclectic bunch playing eclectic music. Loads of volunteers, a wide variety of interests and boundless enthusiasm all round. You can find them at 107.8fm.

Rockland New Inn: Welcome to Alix and John

2011-07-27T21:33:00.001+01:00

THE on-off drama at The New Inn in Rockland St Mary continues. Now it’s good news again with a husband and wife team having taken over on July 17th. Alix and John Freeman come to Norfolk after a stint in Nottinghamshire. “We’ve been all over the place looking for the perfect pub and when we came down the hill here for the first time, I just looked at it and said ‘Wow’” said Alix. “And that was before I’d even seen the boats on the dyke.” But once again there’s a “but”. Once again it all depends on a deal being done with the pub’s owners Punch. “At the moment we’re managers,” added Alix. “We hope to become tenants, but we’re still negotiating.” In other words everything is all rather temporary. Getting a B&B service going for fishermen is the first priority – Alix is looking to charge roughly £35 a night with a cooked breakfast thrown in. And as I chatted to them this afternoon a Dutch couple on bikes were preparing to put up their tent in the garden. T&B I guess they call that.

Nothing is ever certain with this pub, but I’ve got a good feeling about these guys. Fingers crossed.

For Sale: a smugglers’ haunt

2011-07-26T15:30:00.001+01:00

THE COCKATRICE, yours for half a million quid. A five-bedroomed former pub situated, as estate agents Durrants put it, “in a superb riverside location on the River Yare [with] wonderful views over marshland and the river.” The blurb is very good on the hectares of land outside and the bedroom measurements inside, but they’re missing the big picture. Because this building, wind-whippingly isolated on the road from Heckingham to Reedham Ferry, was notorious as a smugglers’ pub. Market it that way chaps, and see your viewings double. Durrants reckons it stopped being a pub in 1922. My understanding is that it hung on till 1931. Certainly when the Broads writer Arthur Patterson passed by in 1930 there was:

“one wherry at its staithe, where a score or more were at one time keen to moor when thirsty. The day hath long passed when smugglers crept to and landed at the staithe at night and “Breydon Pirate” is all but extinct.”

There’s much more where that came from in my Wherryman’s Way book. Perhaps the estate agents would like a copy?

Wanted: young legs for old mill

2011-07-25T19:14:00.001+01:00

IF you listened closely at the annual get-together of the Friends of Hardley Mill last week, you might have heard a quiet creak or two in the background. It wasn’t the sails going round on this recently restored windpump, it was ancient bones complaining after years of tramping up and down the mill’s internal staircase. The latest project has been to take away a temporary gallery (pictured here a year or so ago) which ran around the building’s cap, and replace it with something more solid. The project, Peter Grix explained at the mill’s AGM, had been more complicated than expected. And whilst it would be completed within weeks, it had taken its toll amongst the volunteers. Because one of the many amazing things about Hardley Mill is the age of the men who have carried out most of the hard graft. The majority of them are in their 70s and 80s. “Running a windmill like this is high maintenance and to be honest, we’re crumbling a little I think,” Peter told the meeting. The answer? Younger volunteers of course. I can’t find contact details on the mill’s website at the moment, but if you want to volunteer or just find out more, email me at steveanddebbie.silk@virgin.net and I’ll pass the message on.

Langley Abbey: Anyone for polo?

2011-06-25T20:02:00.001+01:00

I KNEW that Langley had hosted its first polo festival earlier this month. But until today I didn’t realise quite how large “the sport of kings” was looming down at the abbey. Indeed the very sign saying Langley Abbey has been taken down to be replaced by “Norfolk Polo Club” across the door. The abbey, with its wonderful medieval history does of course remain open to visitors, but the friendly shop full of upmarket foods and souvenirs has been elbowed into the cafe next door. In its place is what looks like a posh gentlemen’s outfitters with pukka chukka shirts on rails and long leather boots selling at £125 a pair. Funnily enough I resisted the urge. I guess it’s all exciting, innovative and entrepreneurial but I can’t help wondering what the dozens of generations of farm labourers who have worked here over the centuries, would make of the place now.

What next for the New Inn at Rockland

2011-06-22T22:41:00.001+01:00

WELL that didn’t last long. The New Inn at Rockland St Mary has shut its doors again – barely two months after its last closure. The picture shows the removal van outside today as Jim Ravenwolf and Sandy Jarvis (below) packed up for the last time. They say the pub might open again in a fortnight – but that would be with more temporary managers via yet another holding company. So the recent history for this pub goes; closed November, opens mid-April, closes mid-June.

Clearly this is no way to run a pub. The regulars have presumably defected to other boozers – or the supermarket. Wherryman’s Way walkers don’t have that option. One well-place source in the village today told me that this size of pub is being crippled by a combination of high rates, high rents from the pub chain and a hefty increase in overheads like electricity. I used to think that location, location, location would mean that the New Inn would always survive. Now I’m not so sure. What’s happening this summer feels like the beginning of an unstoppable decline. It’s very sad.

Big camera + small canoe = great film

2011-06-13T21:16:00.001+01:00

SO how on earth did they film that beautiful Youtube number on the tranquil upper reaches of the Bure which I mentioned on Saturday then? I’ve just found out, by stumbling across the Big Sky Production’s blog. It also reveals that Mr Big Sky isn’t a big fan of the water …not that you can tell. The film is here and the blog here. The photo – also from the blog – shows Buxton Mill.

Go find the Hedge Finders

2011-06-12T11:47:00.001+01:00

IF YOU like your nature, you might want to follow the Hedge Finders blog set up by a Somerset artist called Duncan Cameron and Norfolk musician Adam Clark. They call it “a collection of writing, images and sounds inspired by natural history” which sums up their posts nicely. A recent entry includes Swallows from “Poems on the Underground” which was new to me. Adam wrote: “The first time I saw this poem was on the tube at commuter time when the sight of swallows over fields in early summer seemed an impossible, bucolic dream. Now swallows attend my morning cycle to work, the world of the tube seems the unreal one. I still like the poem though.”

“The swallows are italic again ….” what a great line that is from Owen Sheers.

* You can find Hedge Finders here.

Humpty Dumpty have cracked it.

2011-06-12T11:20:00.001+01:00

CONGRATULATIONS to the Wherryman’s Web’s favourite brewery which celebrated a real ale milestone earlier this month. Reedham-based Humpty Dumpty brew cracking ales like Reedcutter and Little Sharpie. (They also do a mean Wherryman’s Way IPA which was launched at the same time as my book last summer.) Anyway they have now sold their 1,000,000 pint – it’s hiding somewhere within a firkin of Reedcutter which was delivered to the Blue Lion at North Pickenham recently (see picture). The brewery is run by four partners - Craig & Mary Anne Fermoy and Stephen & Lesley George – who took over the business in September 2006. Head Brewer Craig said: “it’s been an amazing 5 years, and it’s great to see our beers being so well received and so much in demand.” Business Manager Lesley said: “it’s been exciting to see the sales grow. We have wonderful customers and have built a great team of staff to support the business.” Well done to the whole team. And don’t forget to do the Humpty Dumpty detour when you’re walking the Wherryman’s Way through Reedham.

* Picture shows Mick Lee, the landlord of the Blue Lion at North Pickenham receiving the Reedcutter cask from Humpty Dumpty driver driver, Jason Clark.

The upper Bure by canoe

2011-06-11T21:20:00.001+01:00

PLANS to preserve the history and natural history of a picturesque stretch of the River Bure continue apace. You’ll remember that a group of people want to use the 100th anniversary of the end of the Aylsham Navigation as an excuse to “raise the profile of our beautiful river”. The navigation, dating back back to 1779, meant that Coltishall, Horstead, Hautbois, Oxnead, Burgh and Aylsham were all connected by river to Great Yarmouth. It was one of many man-made projects destroyed by the devastating floods of 1912 – hence the looming 100th anniversary. Now a charity has been formed and the new Bure Navigation Conservation Trust plans to work towards setting a riverside footpath – perhaps with signs and info boards along the lines of the Wherryman’s Way. (My original article is here, while there’s much more on this website as well as this blog. ) Anyway as well as charity status, there is now a video. What Stu Wilson calls a “five minute taster” of a trip between Coltishall and Buxton. It’s not a stretch of river I know, but this film certainly encapsulates the unique tranquillity of canoeing along the upper stretches of our Broads rivers. …Or what Surlingham naturalist Ted Ellis called the “utter peace of Broadland”.

Geldeston Locks: the Movie

2011-05-24T22:25:00.001+01:00

I KNOW you’re busy and you haven’t got time …but go on give this film a go. It’s a beautifully put together piece of oral history on The Geldeston Locks – one of the most charismatic pubs on the Broads network. Hats off to all involved in commissioning it.

Jim and Sandy take over at the New Inn

2011-05-08T22:06:00.001+01:00

MEET the new team at the New Inn at Rockland. Jim Ravenwolf and Sandy Jarvis stepped into the breach three weeks ago allowing the doors of this lovely pub to open for the first time in five months. So far they’ve been impressed with the number of walkers and cyclists coming through the doors, but are slightly disappointed with the quantity of locals. Sandy plans to start offering Bed and Breakfast within a week (there are two en-suite rooms above) and they’re keen to get gigs going too. “Music and Ale, that’s the direction we want to go in,” said Jim. “Wherry outsells all three lagers, that tells you a lot.”

So the good news is that it’s re-opened. The bad news is that we haven’t got the security of having leaseholders in place. That’s not Jim and Sandy’s fault of course. But the reality is that they are managers, doing the honours temporarily on behalf of a holding company which presumably wants to see if the numbers add up before committing further. Sandy can’t say how long they’ll be in place. “It’s suck it and see,” she said. Once again with Wherryman’s Way pubs, it’s a case of use it or lose it.

* I will give a phone number for the B&B once the pub has a phone line. At the moment the lack of a line also means you can’t pay for food or drink by card. (Jim has on occasion driven customers to the cashpoint in Loddon, but that’s another story…)

Kayaking the Yare IV: Bawburgh to Earlham Park

2011-04-30T15:12:00.000+01:00

IF YOU were whizzing along Norwich’s southern bypass on Friday morning with your window open, you might just have heard an expletive or two coming up from the bridge beneath you. It was me in my inflatable kayak, coming to terms with a right royal puncture - inevitably in the middle of bleedin’ nowhere. Until then my royal wedding plans had gone like clockwork. First load up bike and canoe in the car. Second padlock the bike to a UEA lamp post, third drive on to Bawburgh. I would then kayak down the Yare to the university, hide it in the undergrowth and cycle back to the car. As the guests started arriving at the abbey I’d be happily lost in the Bowthorpe Bends. By the balcony kiss I should have been propping up the bar at the King’s Head making sarky comments. The reality was slightly different. With one of the two chambers burst I could limp on, but it took me a while to realise that in this newly crumpled kayak, everything was taking twice as long and was twice as hard.

Which is a shame because this is probably the most varied and challenging of all the four stretches of the Yare I’ve covered. Everyone agrees that there’s no point kayaking any higher up than Bawburgh. The village is a great place to start and I’d spotted three kingfishers before I’d even shot Bawburgh bridge. Beneath Bawburgh you are in farming country, albeit the kind of farmland where warblers nest in the thick nettles on the river bank. The river itself felt incredibly clean. It’s full of underwater vegetation going with the flow. Every time I scooped up a handful, a few watery creatures came up with them.

Then it’s under the A47 bridge and into a tighter, more claustrophobic Yare which winds through gravel pits. Here vast white willows have crashed across the river making navigation a challenge. You get the impression that these trees spring into a second life once the main trunk has fallen. The canopy remains and new shoots emerge, leaving you trapped in a micro-climate. And in my case, a climate complete with sharp underwater branches ready to puncture the surviving chamber.

Extravagant meanders mean the river takes two miles to travel less than one mile east to Colney. In between the modern estate of Bowthorpe pops up on the port bow. Two more giant willows have split next to each other on a flood plain opposite, presumably as the result of a lightning strike. Again new growth is everywhere, but the grotesque remains of the trunks leave each tree looking like an extra from Harry Potter’s Forbidden Forest.

Then there is wonderful sheltered reach backing onto some lucky houses in Colney. That’s where the main photo (above) was taken. By now the sun was out and the wildlife with it – an egret went fishing just yards away. But it was shallow too and my lack of buoyancy meant I kept grounding. Eventually I commandeered a garden jetty for a major bail out. Because everybody was watching a certain wedding no-one was around to object. Later the river swings southwards again and West Earlham replaces Bowthorpe to our left. Bored and tired by bailing and grounding, I eventually gave up at the cafe in Earlham Park. And thank you to the owner who didn’t mind me sloshing in river water as I asked for my cup of tea. Wills and Kate were man and wife and I’d just about completed my mission. Now, who knows how to fix a puncture in a kayak?

Kayaking the Yare III. Cringleford to Earlham Park.

2011-04-23T22:23:00.001+01:00

I DUSTED off the kayak for the first time this year today and yes it was good to be back on the water. Today’s task was to pick up where I left off before winter rudely got in the way; kayaking the upper River Yare two hour chunks at a time.The first leg last October saw me go from just above the old mill buildings in Lakenham to Harford Bridges. Two weeks later it was Harford Bridges to Cringleford. Today I went in just upstream from the mill building at Cringleford (pictured). From there you peep into the extensive back gardens of houses on Colney Lane before river and road veer apart on the approach to the UEA. As ever the river provided its own nature show. Grey wagtails balanced on the weir close to the mill while a green woodpecker yaffled from the trees. Further upstream I’d like to claim both sedge and reed warblers but I’d only crumble under cross-examination, such was their camouflage among the reeds. Rather bizarrely I saw six policemen on the Cringleford stretch. Four were following up reports of boys playing with a lifebuoy (slow crime day was it fellas?) while the final two were cycling along the riverside footpath. (“Well the rest of the patch is the Larkman so yeh, it is a bit more peaceful.”)

At the UEA, the river heads west with only a narrow strip of land between the river and the university lake. A basic slipway close to a footbridge (pictured) here meant I could get out and stretch my legs among the dozens of walkers doing the same. Further upstream things got even busier at Earlham Park with kids piling into the water to cool off. And whereas I am used to being the only craft on the river, today I was one of four. Canoes and kayaks are definitely becoming more popular. Come and join the fun before the river gets too crowded.

* Access on this stretch is easy. At Cringleford, get down to the river on the Eaton side of the bridge. A footpath quickly takes you under the A11 and brings you right next to the river. That footpath continues all the way. You could get in from the UEA too or even via the new-ish access road to the hospital. Next stop for me? Colney to Bowthorpe.

A new start for the New Inn

2011-04-14T21:35:00.001+01:00

GREAT news from Rockland St Mary courtesy of local resident Tony P. As Tony’s photo makes clear, the New Inn will re-open this Saturday. Wherryman’s Web regulars will remember that this pub closed in a hurry last November. Boat owners love it for its position at the head of Boat Dyke. Walkers and villagers make good use of it too. I’ve yet to establish whether this means there is a new leaseholder in place (good) or whether Punch Taverns have installed a manager (less good, see comment on this previous story). But to be fair Punch has at least lived up to its pledge in February that the doors would reopen by Easter. Here’s to a new start at the New Inn.

Wot no Wherryman’s?

2011-03-15T22:16:00.001Z

A NEW website to promote the Broads gets launched on Friday but it’s already looking good here. Nicholas Crane is the star of the show. And the swooping aerial shots in his video show all the high-production values you’d expect from the star of Coast. All in all I think the site looks good; clean, professional and crisp. The boating element is downplayed compared to yesteryear. Bikes, canoes, birdwatching and angling get virtually equal booking. I do have one tiny criticism. Under walks, one particular long-distance path is notable by its absence. You guessed it, they’ve left out The Wherryman’s Way. Shurely shome mistake?

Loddon Swan: yours for £400,000

2011-02-28T19:36:00.001Z

AS predicted here a few months ago, The Swan at Loddon is up for sale, its owners clearly having given up on it. The estate agents’ board went up today offering the old coaching inn as a freehold property. Will anyone else take it on a pub, as a restaurant, as a hotel? How about a cafe on the ground floor and flats upstairs? There are lots of questions for Enterprise Inns and any new buyers. And lots of potential too. The blurb makes clear just what an extensive property this is; two bars, a dining area suitable for 20 covers, a beer cellar, an entire four-bedroomed flat on the second floor and sizeable outbuildings at the back on a one acre site. So what about the tiny market that still musters every Monday? A cluster of stalls huddled on the car park constitute Loddon’s last claim to be a market town. And what about the Loddon Swan Bowls Club and its manicured green? All the Victorian writers raved about it and I guess it could have been in existence for much longer. The “Tenure details” section of the sale document runs as follows: “Freehold with vacant possession on completion (except in respect of the Bowling Club which has no formal agreement to use the Bowling Green). Ouch. Let’s hope for a new owner with a heart and a sense of history.

A new start for the New Inn

2011-02-25T13:37:00.001Z

The owners of the New Inn at Rockland St Mary say they hope to have the pub re-opened by Easter. There are no guarantees, say Punch Taverns, but certainly that’s the plan and they’re “currently talking to interested parties”. Phew, some hope for this classic Wherryman’s Way staging post at last. But it’s becoming a familiar pattern isn’t it? Close down as winter approaches, re-open with a quick link of paint come the Spring. If it is that difficult to make a go of it throughout the year, then perhaps some pubs are going to have to make this pattern official and try to cut the overheads in the process. And perhaps so-called “micropubs” are the way ahead. There are none in our part of the region, but a boozer in Kent keeps winning awards by keeping it simple, low key and low-cost. The Butchers Arms at Herne is a free house – a whole different ball game admittedly – but I wonder if it shows the way ahead for some of our back of beyond Broads pubs.

Another bleedin’ blog

2011-02-18T22:31:00.001Z

JUST a quick word to say that I’ve got another blog up and running …I know, one was more than enough wasn’t it? It’s because I’ve started to write a second book – provisionally called Riverside Norwich. For much of the time I wrote the Wherryman’s Way in splendid isolation. But this time I’m experimenting by posting regular updates on a separate blog to show what I’m researching and how I think I’m doing. And, crucially, asking people for their suggestions. Riverside Norwich will look at every inch of the Wensum and the Yare across the Greater Norwich area, it will for example take in Lakenham (Yare) and Taverham (Wensum); two areas where I bet very few residents know much about their local waterway. Like the Wherryman’s Way book, this one will include riverside walks and I’m also keen on helping canoeists find good spots to get in and out. (Is it me or is canoeing really starting to take off?) There are two big caveats. One, I haven’t got a book deal yet and two, not a single person has commented on that site yet! But hey, it’s early days. The last book took five years, so don’t hold your breath on the follow-up. It’s my “difficult second album” remember. So in future it’s Broads stuff on this blog and “Riverside Norwich” stuff on the other one. Finally thanks to @overbychristmas on twitter for focusing my mind on the difference between the two.

* Picture shows the Yare just upstream from Lakenham, one of several beautiful reaches only accessible to us paddlers. Riverside Norwich can be found here.

More on the Tud

2011-02-08T21:40:00.001Z

THANKS for all the Tud suggestions (see comments to post below). In particular thanks to Pete Chambers who suggested Mattishall Burgh as a place to take pictures. This was the Tud near MB early this morning – the first decent morning for photography in what feels like months. One more fascinating Tud fact; in May 1900 plans were put before Parliament to build a “Norwich to Dereham Light Railway” along the Tud Valley through places like Hockering and Honingham and joining the old MG+N line at Hellesdon. But since I have lost two followers since I started tweeting about the Tud I shall now swiftly move on….

A tad frustrating on the Tud.

2011-02-03T22:12:00.000Z

OK, this might be cheating, but I need your help. I’m plotting a new book at the moment; similar style to The Wherryman’s Way but different area. And probably more on where to canoe. But suffice to say I’m researching the River Tud – and I’m not getting very far. I know it runs from roughly Dereham to its confluence with the Wensum at Hellesdon Mill. There’s some nice stuff about the old stately home of Costessey Hall being built on its banks – especially as that’s now the site of Costessey Park Golf Club. But where’s the source? Wikipedia says “south of Dereham”. My shiny new OS map of Dereham and Aylsham sort of agrees, with the line of blue running out somewhere closet to Spurn Farm. Meanwhile a book on Shipdham claims that it is the source for the Yare, the Wissey and the Tud, although it gives the vicinity for the Tud rather vaguely as “near Thomas Bullock Primary School”. Away from the source, where can I get a good photo of it, is there any sort of vista at Hockering or North Tuddenham for example? For the moment we’ll have to live with this view in winter sunlight taken between Longwater Lane in Costessey and the golf course. It’s a modest little river but I think it deserves more than the 200-odd words I’ve so far mustered.All info welcome.

Yare Song: Poetry in (river) motion

2011-02-02T21:20:00.001Z

EVER been on those riverboat trips which leave from Norwich and head downriver? Poet Julia Webb did and came back inspired. Inspired to write Yare Song:

The river flows on
surges over and under me,
marsh lover, mud flipper
down amongst the groundlings,
moorhens, blue-lights,
sweet-shallow-mornings.

I am scaled and slithered:
strings of weed for hair,
dipping my shade-fingers
amongst bubbles and eddies,
spark-netted on the meanderings
of the mind’s own river,

hearing the shadow-ghosts
of all those drowned girls: witches,
dipped down deep amongst
the slippery tendrils,
swan-necked lovelies
warbling in the reeds, singing.

As you leave the city, Julia explains, “the skipper gives a commentary about wildlife and river history and on the way back he leave you to your own thoughts. I found it really inspirational for writing and although I began by writing about the natural aspects of the river I found my mind wandering to the darker history of rivers dunking women to see if they were witches etc. There is something timeless and mystical about river travel somehow.” Hear, hear. Thanks to Julia for allowing me to publish Yare Song. Do we think she’s got the gig as the Wherryman’s Way Poet Laureate? Either way you can find her blog here. And thanks too to Cameron Self at Literary Norfolk for the shout.

Loddon: Still no go at The Swan

2011-01-31T21:56:00.001Z

WALK past on any evening and the backlit logo on the Guinness tap still sparkles back at you. But the doors of The Swan at Loddon remain shut and the prospect of a pint of anything seems more remote than ever. You’ll recall that this pub closed its doors in a hurry back in September and has lain empty ever since. Enterprise Inns made no promises then and when I contacted them again this week they said they were still considering their options. Yes but what does that mean? Well the reply landed in my inbox today saying that “selling the pub is one of the options we are considering (any future use of the pub would rest with the purchaser)”.

My money’s on this former coaching inn being turned into flats within 12 months. And the weird thing is that despite living in Loddon, I’ve not heard a single person express any regret over its passing. Perhaps this is what happens when buildings and institutions outlive their usefulness; they quietly wither and die unmourned. The question now is what would happen to the bowling green at the rear. Bowls has been played at the Swan in Loddon for more than a hundred years – perhaps a lot longer. My understanding is that the club don’t own the freehold, they’re just quietly playing on and hoping for the best.

Norwich: A Mardle on the Wensum

2011-01-28T21:36:00.001Z

MENTION “Jonathan Mardle” to any card-carrying EDP reader over a certain age and they are bound to nod knowingly. “Jonathan Mardle” (pictured left) was the pseudonym of leader writer Eric Fowler. His weekly essays appeared in the paper from 1946 right through to his death in 1981. To my mind he was a great writer. Certainly his love for the county of Norfolk shines through every sentence. I picked up “The Best of Jonathan Mardle” from a second hand book shop in Cromer last summer and his stuff just hasn’t dated. Or at least if it has dated, it still makes sense. June 1956 sees him wishing that “Norwich from the River” would look more attractive. Compared to his description, I think you’ll agree we’ve made great strides in half a century. It is, he says:

“sadly apparent that the river, as it passes through the heart of the city becomes a very dirty stream, and moreover that great lengths of its banks are still used like a slum or a lumber yard. ..The impression of neglect is deepened if you go through Norwich by boat from Carrow to the New Mills. Few of the present generation of citizens have ever done this: and indeed I myself did it for the first time only about a month ago, through the kindness of a friend who had his motor boat at Whitlingham. The little port of Norwich with its slab-sided coasters discharging coal and grain and loaded scrap iron is fun, as any place frequented by ships must be. But once you are past Carrow Works, the flour mill and the brewery, the bank on your left as you go upstream is a horrid mixture of empty slums and dumps of waste paper and scrap iron. It is a poor sort of salute to the visiting yachtsmen whom we invited to explore the beauty of Norwich.”

“…Up to Bishop Bridge it is pleasant enough if you can ignore the oily scum on the water, Beyond that fine old bridge too, the city looks gracious, with a tree clad bank on the right …and to the left the old brick tower standing in the meadow of the Great Hospital. Then factories to the right, the Hospital gardens to left; but next – angels and ministers of grace defend us! – the gasworks. The old yarn factory (now Jarrold’s printing works) on the opposite bank, is mellow and graceful in comparison – some Georgian sense of style and proportion still pervaded the local factory architecture in 1839, Whitefriars Bridge, of the present century is distinctly inferior…”

“Above the Duke Street bridge the water was so low that we ran aground; then chugged along at half speed, with rubbish chocking the propeller, until we reached the narrows between the high brick walls of Bullard’s Brewery – more of those old industrial buildings which have a certain antique charm about them.

“So I cannot commend the voyage, except, as unusual. But I can visualise what it might be if in the rebuilding of the derelict area between King Street and the river we built some pleasant houses with lawns and gardens; if the gas works with their ugliness, dirt and effluent, were removed …and other houses with gardens put in their place; if more industrialists would think of the riverside as a frontage, and not as a backyard with a drain running through it; if all of us thought of the river as something that ought to be a joy to see.”

Well I did “Carrow to the New Mills” by kayak last summer and while we haven’t got everything right, I think I’d give today’s Wensum a good nine out of ten. Hats off to the vision of that visionary Mr Mardle.

King Street Norwich: Plans for the Ferry Boat site

2011-01-15T14:22:00.001Z

A PICTURE tells a thousand words for the Ferry Boat site in Norwich. Under these plans just released by Norwich Backpackers the original pub (on the left) is dwarfed by the new building destined for the old car park. Just for reference we’re looking at things from King Street and it’s the Novi Sad pedestrian bridge on the extreme right. Until I saw these drawings I hadn’t realised how small a part of the total plan the old pub building really is. Downstairs the pub will be a real ale shop and bar, upstairs will be a flat. The new building is the hostel proper and will be timber-framed from the first floor upwards. Various environmentally-sound options like straw bale and hempcrete are being considered for many of the walls here ..or more correctly for the infilling.

Old Ferry Boat regulars will remember that the pub used to extend out towards the river at the back – my memory is that you could drink on several different levels, getting lower as you got closer to the river. All that’s going to be replaced by what will “essentially be a timber frame barn, incorporating the lovely chalk and flint wall to the South East of the back bar and the stone floor of the existing boat house. “ Storage facilities for canoes remind us that these guys are keen that people discover Norwich by water.

* More details on Norwich Backpackers own website. Thanks for the jpeg fellas.

Langley: The Wherry sails on into a new life

2011-01-14T13:44:00.001Z

I POPPED in to the Wherry Inn at Langley for a swift one this morning, but as this picture shows the old boozer isn’t quite what it used to be. In fact the Wherry hasn’t been a pub for almost eight years and I only made it inside at all thanks to owner Gary Hayes agreeing to unlock the padlocks on the temporary doors and switch on the equally temporary lighting just for my benefit. Gary runs Willow Builders – the company which will soon begin the job of converting this building into a house. And because I never made it into the Wherry when it was “alive” (see previous post) I was keen to see its interior before it starts a new life.

The last decade has not been kind to the Wherry. A succession of quick-fire landlords followed by closure, followed by squatters, followed by a rejected planning application for a restaurant, followed by endless rumours. I know that the closure itself proved controversial – with Gary copping some stick in the process. But even a dyed-in-the-wool pub romantic like me can see that these days there just isn’t enough trade in a location like this.

Inside there’s little left to mourn. No bar, no furniture, no soul. Gary (pictured right) says that just about everything made of wood was put on the wood burning stove by the squatters …who then left with the stove. Now Gary’s team will gut what remains, do a little light demolition here and build an extension there. And by September a five-bedroomed house with all mod-cons will emerge. So will it still be called The Wherry? No says Gary, but he is keen to reflect the history by perhaps naming the house after a wherry. Now were there any with strong local connections, or should it nod to one of the wherries which survive to this day? Suggestions please….. In the meantime one of the pub signs has found a very good new home, in my garage. Thanks again Mr H.

The long and winding Wensum

2011-01-11T21:05:00.001Z

THEY reckon that the River Wensum takes its name from the Anglo-Saxon word for winding. But the truth is that it winds less than it used to. The reason: centuries of interference from man. But now three different bodies have come together to make this beautiful Norfolk river a bit more curvaceous again. The idea is that if modern man undoes what medieval man had to do, we’ll get more of the wildlife and fish we associate with something quiet rare – a chalk river. Here’s how they put it on the Environment Agency website (and thanks EA for letting me use the photo of your guys in action at Ringland).

“In essence the river is too wide, too deep, and too straightened, as well as being heavily impounded by mill structures. It is also disconnected from its floodplain by spoil banks resulting from historical dredging for land drainage and industrial (milling) activities. For the first time we have looked at a whole river scale to see what action needs to be taken to restore each section of the channel. The main recommendations of the strategy include a reduction in impoundment, reducing the width of the channel, restoring connectivity with the floodplain, and restoring the gravel bed of the river.”

That “whole river” bit is quite important. It shows the ambition of the River Wensum Restoration Strategy. Surviving mills and sluices are also under the spotlight for how much they interfere with a river’s normal flow. We forget how much man had to meddle in the past. The Strategy guys (EA plus Natural England and the Water Management Alliance) are very keen to tell more people what they’re doing. More details can be found here.

Book review: The Butterfly Isles by Patrick Barkham

2011-01-09T21:09:00.001Z

I’M GOING to commit heresy now by recommending a book which disses the Norfolk Broads. What’s worse the offender – Patrick Barkham – is a Norfolk boy. But he’s written a beautiful book on British butterflies which represents much of what is good about “new nature writing”. (I’m going to struggle for a precise definition of NNW, but basically it’s people who write lyrically about their knowledge of nature through some sort of personal journey or quest. Try Crow Country by Mark Cocker or Nature Cure by Richard Mabey and then tell me what you make of others like Robert Macfarlane and Roger Deakin.)

Barkham’s quest is to see all 59 species of British butterfly in one British summer. He does it in style of course and offers much thanks to his naturalist father who laid the foundations during childhood summer holidays spent “on the corner of the coast where north Norfolk turns into The Wash.” The Butterfly Isles sees Barkham take his dad’s teaching and run with it. He speaks to all the right people and manages to unearth fascinating stories from learned lepidopterists along the way. So of course every Broads fan is just waiting for the Swallowtail moment. And this Broads fan found the search on the boardwalks of Hickling Broad ever so slightly disappointing. For a start Barkham admits that

“it may be sacrilegious for someone born and bred in Norfolk to say so but I have never really loved the Broads. I adore the flat marshes of north Norfolk but at Hickling it seemed as if we were below sea level. It felt oppressive.”

The swallowtail is spotted, admired and has its photo taken

“but something about the experience of watching Swallowtails on the Broads failed to move me. I think it always had. Was it the order of the nature reserve, with its boardwalks and regular trudge of stunned visitors where leaving the path and plunging into the reeds – the delicious bit, the embrace of nature – was forbidden? Are Swallowtails showy but shallow. Or inbred and unfriendly?”

Harsh huh? But look, don’t let it put you off the book as whole. The Butterfly Isles published by Granta is a cracking read.

The Ferry Boat nears its destination

2011-01-08T11:30:00.001Z

2011 looks like being the year when The Ferry Boat finally becomes a living breathing building again with new plans to convert it into a backpackers’ hostel being submitted to the local council. The owners, you’ll recall, already run a similar hostel on the North Norfolk coast. As well as the core business of getting bums on beds (so to speak) they also plan a cafe and a real ale shop – the latter harking back to this building’s long history as a pub. And they’re organised. There’s a website and a twitter campaign to get people to sing its praises before Norwich’s planning committee meets. And, at the risk of this post becoming all hyperlink and no content, there’s much more on why this building is so important to Norwich’s history here.

Happy New Year–but roll on summer

2011-01-02T22:09:00.001Z

ON A GREY winter’s day enjoy this superb photo from back in June at Wheatfen Broad in Surlingham. Taken by Elizabeth Cannon, it’s one of a number contained on a new flickr group for the remote Broad made famous by Ted Ellis. The group is called Wheatfen – Ted Ellis Trust reserve. Expect more details of the Trust’s 2011 programme on The Wherryman’s Web very soon.

Minus 11 in Loddon

2010-12-18T19:49:00.001Z

MY BACK garden in Loddon registered minus 11.8 overnight, certainly the lowest recorded temperature during our seven years here. As this picture shows, the Chet duly froze, although in most places the ice was less than half an inch thick. Our old friend “cardboard ice” was back on the dykes – that’s the layer of ice left hanging in mid-air as high tide retreats to low. Everywhere looked stunningly beautiful in the weak morning sunshine.

No room at the Inn

2010-12-17T15:00:00.001Z

THE DOORS at the New Inn at Rockland St Mary look like they’ll stay firmly shut for a while yet. You’ll recall that this beautiful riverside pub closed in November. At the time its owners Punch Taverns told me that they were in discussion with the leaseholder and “hope to resolve the situation as soon as possible.” A month on and it’s clear that the leaseholder is not returning and Punch has yet to find anyone willing to take it on. The company’s latest statement runs as follows: “It's always our priority that our pubs remain open and trading and serving the local community. We are looking for the right partner to drive the business forward and we are currently talking to interested parties. We will re-open as soon as we recruit a new licensee.” There are some pubs along the Wherryman’s Way which I always half expect to be in trouble, but not this one. To me The New Inn seemed to have everything going for it – good moorings for both boats and cars and a decent reputation. They have to get it open by Easter …don’t they?

Raise a glass to Half Pint …and her proud owner.

2010-12-15T21:05:00.001Z

IF YOU read my last post you’ll know that the undisputed stars of the Norfolk Broads Forum at the moment are Callum and his boat Half Pint. In summary Half Pint was already semi-famous in boating circles for a very dodgy cabin made from decking timber which meant it sank ignominiously on a dyke off Rockland Broad last summer. But since the autumn Callum has got hold of it and is steadily renovating it. It’s his first boat and money is tight so there’s lots to learn, but the online community has come together with great generosity. This picture comes thanks to one of his NBF fans who also writes: “Callum is blown away by the help people are offering him, giving him leisure batteries, paid work cleaning boats, the odd gift toward halfpint and help finding an apprenticeship.” All in all it’s a story to warm the cockles of your heart at Christmas! Check out the latest NBF comments here.

Half-pint and the joys of the internet

2010-12-12T20:06:00.001Z

THE AWESOME power of the internet has been front page news this week. The revelations from Wikileaks keep coming. And the tit for tat attacks followed with online hackers managing to disable major financial websites. Is this the first Online War, commentators asked. In response let me take to a kinder part of the world wide web; the Projects page of the Norfolk Broads Forum. For the last two months Projects has been dominated by Callum and his boat Half Pint. Since the autumn Callum has been giving Half Pint a complete makeover. It’s his first boat, he’s working on a budget, but he’s got the bug. Like all good engineers, Callum can’t spell for toffee, but that somehow adds to the charm as he tells us of his latest breakdown on Rockland Broad because the “torttle cable had gone brittle and dicintigrated”. Early on one member of the community had a pop at him, but everyone else quickly put the critic in his place. Since then he has been carried along on a wave of online goodwill. From a new engine and anti-fouling paint to a great “curved paint job on the bow” a fleet of older boaters have rallied round offering their advice and enthusiasm. So far 6,800 people have had a look and 133 have added their suggestions. Wikileaks? You want to get a better bilge pump, mate.

* The picture belongs to Callum.

A silk Sargasso in Reedham Marshes

2010-12-10T09:45:00.001Z

A BROWSE through the backwaters of Cameron Self’s Literary Norfolk website always produces something interesting. Like this poem entitled Reedham Mashes. It was written by Edwin Brock (pictured) on his experiences of being stranded aboard a cruiser. Brock was that rare thing - a policeman-poet. He died in 1997 and is rather better known for Five Ways to Kill a Man and Song of a Battery Hen. But this poem is excellent too.

They say the water's salt here
as though the North Sea's fingers
are at our belly, tickling us like trout.
Dozy from blue and bottle-green,
we wallow in each passing wash
like a long drunk on a hot Saturday.
The reeds sigh and part as we enter them,
then zip us up behind like some
silk Sargasso It is an old fantasy.
Sick from a seized engine, we sit
in this sanctuary of seabirds where
at night the crocodiles slip from holes
in their reed bed to jostle us
like hissing logs; and we confuse
the red rising moon with its setting sun.
Now no longer water-borne we drift
on this night mist which dreams us:
there are sharp cries, quiet splashes
and the voices of fishermen in an old pub
where a hand pours a White Shield Worthington
as clear as a bell and without a hint of mud.

Anyone who has ever been enveloped by reeds (that’s me in a canoe, and usually involuntarily) will know that “zipped up” feeling very well. Perhaps now I know it’s a “silk Sargasso” I won’t find it so eerie. There’s much more like this at Literary Norfolk.

When the Bure had locks

2010-12-03T12:13:00.001Z

THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY of the 1912 floods might still be more than 18 months away, but it’s already got some people thinking. Among all the loss of life and damage, the floods also brought an end to the Aylsham Navigation on the River Bure. Long forgotten, this waterway dated back to 1779. It meant that the people of Coltishall, Horstead, Hautbois, Oxnead, Burgh and Aylsham were all connected by river to Great Yarmouth for the first time – a huge boon when it came to getting cargo in and their produce out. Essentially – as a new website says – the navigation was a series of locks designed to get around pre-existing Mill streams. It mostly used the River Bure for its 9.5 miles but it did include some canal cuts. But all that was pre-flood:

“When the flood came on August 26th 1912 all of the locks and some of the bridges (including the one pictured between Coltishall and Horstead) were washed out. The navigation was already in decline as the coming of the railways in the 1880's had dramatically cut the trade. After the flood the Navigation was never re-opened. Trading wherries caught upstream were abandoned with the exception of the Zulu which was man-hauled around the obstructions to gain her freedom.”

Now a new group wants to “raise the profile of our beautiful river” and it will use the 100th anniversary as a focus. There are already some great stories, documents and pictures on their website and the next meeting will take place in January. This painting is pinched from the website too.

In praise of signs …and the “dumbed down masses”

2010-11-30T22:08:00.001Z

YOU might remember a few days ago I mentioned plans to do up Geldeston Lock. Amongst the improvements are proposals for information boards. Uncontroversial enough you might think, but not in some parts of the Norfolk Broads Speakers’ Corner. One calls them “dreaded, invasive and intrusive” whilst Mardler calls the project “tosh, garbage and patronising twaddle”. He continues:

”Once again the powers that be feel a need to erect more unsightly, unwanted and unnecessary signs in order to "educate" the dumbed down masses who are, obviously, incapable of interpreting the meaning of a lock (in this case) and finding out about the history of a place themselves. This is a sad indictment of our education system and the over weaning self interest of those who would infest the countryside with these atrocities.”

Wow. I had no idea that boards could elicit such strong feelings. I can see that you wouldn’t want them everywhere. (The ruins of St Saviour’s church at Surlingham for example benefit from being uninterpreted and mysterious.) I can see that less is sometimes more. I get that. And yet and yet…. surely it has to be a good idea to give people just a hint of the wonderful history around them? Especially those incomers without a clue. I should know, I’m one of them, or at least I used to be until some information boards in places like Reedham Marshes (pictured) and Loddon and Bramerton got me so into the Wherryman’s Way that I ended up writing a book on it. Dumbed down masses or just people who need a nudge in the right direction? I know which side I’m on.

* As well as Speakers’ Corner, there’s a great range of views on this subject on the Norfolk Broads Forum.

Brrrr…amerton

2010-11-25T21:37:00.001Z

AT FIRST sight the Yare Valley had escaped the worst of the weather this morning. Certainly there was no snow lying on the fields on that beautiful, peaceful back road which runs from Langley through Claxton and Rockland to Bramerton and Kirby Bedon. But if you looked carefully a few flakes were settling, perversely in the more sheltered spots. This was St Peter’s Church at Bramerton during a morning flurry. On days like these you simply have to take the scenic route to work. For more on the warren of roads between here and Yare try this short post from May.

Unlocking memories down at Geldeston

2010-11-24T21:42:00.001Z

HERE’S A good idea from the Broads Authority down on the River Waveney. They want to smarten up the area around Geldeston Lock – and they’re appealing to the older generation to help them with local knowledge. New information boards will go up explaining how the Waveney locks worked and why – they were the only way of making the river navigable to wherries as far up river as Bungay. Essentially they want people’s memories, particularly if they date back to before the lock’s closure in 1934.

“There has been a longstanding ambition from the Broads Authority to do up Geldeston Lock, and the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads Charitable Trust and Beccles Museum have been wanting to explain the history of the lock for a long time,” said Broads Authority Communications Manager Clare Weller. “We are working together to develop the idea and are looking for about 12 people to interview.”

* Email thecurator@becclesmuseum.org.uk if you can help.

Now the New Inn closes

2010-11-23T20:56:00.001Z

FIRST the Loddon Swan closed and now the New Inn at Rockland St Mary has shut its doors. So what’s happened? I asked Punch Taverns who sent me an email saying: “Our priority is to re-open the New Inn. We are currently in discussions with our leaseholder about the closure of the New Inn and hope to resolve the situation as soon as possible.” It’s a statement which begs more questions than answers, but let’s hope the inter-regnum is a short one. At least in Loddon and Chedgrave, Wherryman’s Way walkers have a choice; in Rockland the New Inn is the last pub standing. In fact it’s the only boozer on the route for miles – Coldham Hall is the nearest upriver and the Beauchamp Arms down. Boat owners too will miss out. This pleasant little cul-de-sac off the Yare includes a trip across Rockland Broad and it’s made all the more appealing by the site of the pub just beyond the staithe. I’m constantly amazed at how quickly landlords come and go at these places. Do they get bored? Do they move on to another pub? Is it not financially viable – in which case why is there always someone else to take over? Can anyone out there explain?

Wherries and Waterways–the film premiere

2010-11-20T18:26:00.001Z

THE WHERRY is heading for Wroxham Bridge and yet its mast isn’t even half down. A major collision seems inevitable. The audience gasps. And then with unhurried, practised steps the crew step the mast just in time to slip underneath the arches. It’s just one image of several from last night’s “Wherries and Waterways” film show in Norwich in aid of the Wherry Yacht Charter charity ..which is why the gasp was so audible. These guys love their wherries. And there was lots from the East Anglian Film Archive to enjoy. Probably my favourite was an Anglia TV Bygones film from 1973 which sees the Wherry Albion take to the sea – from Yarmouth round to King’s Lynn – in order to reach a festival at Ely. You also get to see famous wherryman Nat Bircham in action (he’s virtually horizontal as he quants the boat through a difficult manoeuvre) and there were plenty of plummy TV accents singing the praises of the Broads in a very 1950s way. (Sample clip: Camera shows young woman fishing, narrator says “I wouldn’t mind being caught by that angler”.) The show comes to Holt and Beccles in March. It’s a must for all wherry anoraks. Full details on the WYC website. The photo comes from there too.

Now you see it……

2010-11-19T14:21:00.001Z

PERHAPS it’s fitting that Norfolk’s largest St George’s flag finally disappeared from the King’s Head in Loddon this week. After all, England had been booed off at Wembley after losing 2-1 against France. Not sure about that shade of orange, mind. Has the landlord gone Dutch?

A final farewell to The Wherry at Langley

2010-11-19T11:32:00.001Z

PICTURE the scene. It was the baking hot summer of 2003. Family Silk had just made the big move from Norwich out into the sticks at Loddon. After several weeks of non-stop unpacking, I manage to escape on my bike to explore for the first time. On a Sunday afternoon I’m dying for a swift one and the Wherry at Langley is just the right distance away. …But you’re miles ahead of me of course. Unbeknown to me, the pub had closed its doors for the final time a few weeks earlier. I’ve enjoyed a drink in every other pub along what we would learn to call the Wherryman’s Way, but The Wherry would be the one that got away.

In the intervening years I’ve heard rumours every which way, but today South Norfolk council confirmed the inevitable. Their website has yet to be updated, but yes they have given permission to convert the “former public house to residential use with erection of 2 storey extension, subject to conditions”. I’m not sure what the conditions are, but I understand that “offering hand-pumped real ale at reasonable prices to blokes on bikes” is not included. At least the building will survive and at least just a few yards up the road, walkers can now be watered and fed at the excellent Langley Abbey. But still it’s the end of an era.

* More details on the pub’s history here.

Wherries and Waterways on Friday

2010-11-15T22:00:00.001Z

A QUICK reminder that the Wherry Yacht Charter charity has organised a film show called “Wherries and Waterways” for this Friday. Read my original post on this from September here. The show takes place at the Assembly House in Norwich. Doors open at 7pm, the film begins at 7.30pm. For tickets call Pauline Simpson on 01692 630674

Tea’s up on the Yare

2010-11-13T12:15:00.001Z

PHOTOGRAPHS of wherries in their heyday have an instant romance to them, but this one is particular good. For a start it instantly transports you back 100 years by its sheer location. Very few people go to Postwick Grove any more – largely because you have to skirt a dredging tip to get there. But a century ago (the stamp on the rear of the postcard is of Edward VII) Postwick was the fashionable place for a stroll or for picnics – witness the onlooker(s) next to the gate. Then there’s relative absence of trees. In the intervening 100 years trees have self-seeded along the entire bank here – you simply can’t get to the riverside for long stretches. That wouldn’t have been allowed to happen then, for the very simple reason that trees got in the way of good wind. I love the smoke from the stove in the cuddy too. Read Black-Sailed Traders and you’ll know how important a constant supply of good tea was to wherrymen. And finally look at the direction of the smoke – straight up. There wasn’t much wind around, so actually the tranquil setting belies a hard journey downriver for the two, or is it three, people on board.

* To explore Postwick Grove, start from Boundary Lane, Thorpe St Andrew. Follow the footpath once the road runs out and cross the railway line. Continue walking and you eventually emerge next to the River Yare. Walk far enough and you see the Woods End pub tantalisingly out of reach on the southern bank.

Whitlingham Lane gets a makeover

2010-11-10T20:57:00.001Z

EVER cursed the pitted, potted lane which runs through Whitlingham Country Park? I’d always assumed the gaping holes were a natural form of traffic calming. But it turns out that improving the road was simply the last on the park’s “things to do” list. It is in fact the final piece in a jigsaw which has seen an ugly gravel extraction pit transformed into a beautiful gateway to the Wherryman’s Way. The Broads Authority says that Whitlingham Lane will be widened as well as resurfaced. They’re also taking the opportunity to formally ban motorists from parking on the verges ..which I guess had been coming for a while.

David Adler, chairman of the Whitlingham Country Park Charitable Trust said: “We are thrilled that the lane is finally being improved, marking the completion of this stunning amenity. Lafarge and the Trust are rightly proud of this beautiful creation which has become a favourite country haunt for local residents and visitors to the Broads. We hope it will continue to provide opportunities for generations of visitors to enjoy the natural world right on the doorstep of the city of Norwich.”

The road should be re-opened by Christmas. Full press release here.

A great Yarmouth accent

2010-11-09T20:29:00.001Z

REMEMBER I was trying to discover if the town of Great Yarmouth still has a distinctive accent? At the time I sent a quick email off to FOND – Friends of Norfolk Dialect. Today I had a response from Peter Trudgill – the author of a book on the county’s lingo as well as countless others on dialect, accent and sociolinguistics.

“The Yarmouth accent certainly used to be somewhat distinct from that of the surrounding countryside,” he told me. “Unlike the rural accents, for instance, it resembled Norwich in having h-dropping. And when I did some research about this - in the 1970s - Lowestoft had a rather different accent again - for example the vowel in words such as coal, boat was different from the Yarmouth version.”

I feel the need to go and do some research of my own, particularly in those great old-fashioned boozers (like the Tudor Tavern, pictured) that Yarmouth seems to specialise in.

Radio Wherryman

2010-11-05T22:25:00.002Z

A QUICK diary note to say that I will be talking about the Wherryman’s Way on BBC Radio Norfolk on Sunday evening. Maggie Secker will be asking the questions from about 5pm.

You hint from round here are yuh?

2010-11-04T20:30:00.001Z

EARLIER this week I quoted Simon Knott’s assertion that Great Yarmouth has its own accent ..as distinct, say, from Lowestoft down the road. Do such differences still exist? Well yes, says 61-year old Brian who hails from Fleggburgh, north of Yarmouth but later moved to just south of Lowestoft. He emailed to say that twenty five years ago he recalls a conversation with some local lads at Oulton Broad who immediately noticed that he wasn’t local from ”the way you talked.” Can anyone get any more recent than that? And if there are still differences, what are the tell-tale signs?

Open your doors St Nicholas

2010-11-02T21:22:00.001Z

GREAT YARMOUTH has a magnificent church, in fact it’s almost a cathedral in terms of size if not in status. Yet you’ll be lucky to see inside St Nicholas’s as you end your Wherryman’s Way walk. Unlike just about every other church along our 35 mile journey, the doors are normally locked. And that, as Simon Knott makes clear in the latest addition to his website dedicated to the churches of Norfolk, just isn’t good enough any more. He writes:

“You may be aghast to learn, then, that this wonderful structure is hardly ever open to the public. At present, you can only visit on a Saturday morning: otherwise, it is merely the private, vastly-subsidised venue of a small group of Sunday worshippers. Nothing could be more short-sighted, and little could be more shameful.

For, while the mission of the Church of England is increasingly seen as to the whole people of God and not just to its registered members, and churches all over England are making themselves open to pilgrims and strangers wanting to feel a sense of the numinous* and even perhaps to be open to a spirituality which may or may not be Christian but which is at least a yearning for God, the people of Great Yarmouth are locked out of their own church from day to day.”

Hear, hear. Away from church opening times, he’s good on the town itself, feeling that it has “broken the surly bonds of proximity to London, which is, after all, fewer than 150 miles away, and instead yearns out for the sea, and Europe”. And just as an aside he asserts that Yarmouth has its own accent. My Thames Valley upbringing means I am hopeless at detecting and decoding the different strains of East Anglian twang. But my (Suffolk born) father in law swears he could spot the difference between a Yarmouth and a Lowestoft accent when he was younger. Do they really still exist today?

* Numinous - “indicating the presence of a divinity”

The perils of Breydon Water

2010-10-29T18:40:00.001+01:00

THIS is Breydon Water looking suitably serene from Breydon Bridge at sunset. But as any reader of Coot Club knows, this three or four mile stretch of inland estuary can be treacherous. The denouement of Arthur Ransome’s 1934 classic children’s book sees the hullabaloos finally run their hire crusier aground here after fog descends without warning. I mention it because Breydon Water is currently providing the Norfolk Broads Forum with its most entertaining thread in a long time. Earlier this month Sunchaser wrote:

“On Saturday 16th October I took some friends out on the boat, our intention was to take them across Breydon to Yarmouth. My boat a Hampton Safari.
Predicted winds were 25 mph. When we first hit Breydon it seemed relatively calm, but as we started to hit open water it started to get rough. We were going with the tide and against the wind. The boat started to really go down into the water and up again, mud weight banging on the front. My decision was to turn around. When we turned around we were going against the tide and with the wind, the boat was just slidding across the top of the waves like a surf board.
My question is as these are not sea going boats, how much can they take?”

Since then it’s been open season. Forum regular Jenny Morgan basically called him a wuss “I suspect that your Hampton can take rather more than its crew can!” while Strowager in contrast warned of huge wave heights and Breydon’s “nasty moods”. Take a look yourself here. This one will run and run.

1878 and all that

2010-10-25T21:32:00.001+01:00

IF you canoe through Norwich often enough you get used to small plaques high above the water line. Invariably they mark the flood level from the summer day in August 1912 when Norwich was hit by its famous flood. Six and a half inches of rain fell in just 12 hours. But that’s not the case with this plaque. This one near the site of the old Bullards brewery on Westwick Street harks back to November 1878, the date of yet another deluge and one I had never heard of. Today’s EDP contains the answer. Or rather the supplement celebrating 140 years of the newspaper contains the answer in the shape of a full report from that very day, together with a dramatic photo of the River Wensum flooded over fields which would later become home to Norwich City. There’s loads of great detail, with the “ferry-houses” of Horning, Surlingham, Cantley and Coldham Hall all reported to be several feet under water. But it’s Norwich, and in particular what the paper calls North Heigham, where the combination of high tide, heavy flow and heavy rain wreaked particular havoc.

“Before the evening had far advanced the usually insignificant stream of 26 feet wide had swollen into a stream which was more than a mile across it. On the one hand it had poured its waters up the densely populated courts and alleys in St Martin’s at Oak and St Miles, and on the other hand it had converted Heigham Street and Causeway into a deep river and spread its waters up the various streets which ran into them. The thousands of people who dwell in these neighbourhoods seemed to be paralysed, for they were powerless to save their homes….”

In fact reading the whole supplement you are struck by how many of Norfolk’s big stories were weather-related. Two inland floods, the coastal floods of 1953 and the Great Storm of 1987. Let’s hope the next one is still a long way off.

Last night at the East Anglian Book Awards

2010-10-21T18:43:00.003+01:00

IT’S BLATANT self-promotion time. Last night my Wherryman’s Way book won the travel and guidebooks category at the EDP/Jarrolds Book Awards in Norwich. It was a good evening. The highlight, undoubtedly, was Louis de Bernieres reading a story in verse called “A Walberswick Goodnight Story”. As Keiron Pym says in today’s EDP, we were all held absolutely spellbound. This love of books was infectious. By the end of the evening I owned four of the shortlisted/winning books. The Medieval Churches of the City of Norwich you just have to have on your shelves and the overall winner The Widow’s Tale by Mick Jackson shows every sign of being unputdownable as a novel. The other two are perhaps less-heralded. But in the Poetry section I can really recommend Yes by Caroline Gilfillan and Gedney Drove End by Cameron Self. I bought Yes today at Jarrolds. You can buy Gedney via Cameron’s Literary Norfolk website. It’s probably 20 years since I last bought collections of poetry. But then that’s what happens when Mr de B comes to town.
* Full story in EDP http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/east_anglian_books_celebrated_at_our_awards_1_686869

Canoeing the Yare – Harford Bridges to Eaton

2010-10-16T21:06:00.001+01:00

THREE horse power this afternoon on the River Yare. Remember two weeks ago I did the stretch from Lakenham up to Harford Bridges? Today I carried on upstream on yet another gorgeous October afternoon. Once again you’re playing hide and seek with the railway track which continues to cross and re-cross the river across Marston Marsh. The big problem this week was Keswick Mill. There’s not an obvious portage point (Portage is the posh word for having to take the canoe out of the water to avoid an obstacle) and I suspect there was a bit of inadvertent trespass when I went back in further up. After that, it opens up a little on the run up to Eaton with Eaton church providing a great focal point for the photos.

I had to pull out just a few yards downstream of the Eaton-Cringleford bridge as the river became too shallow. On the way back I took another channel which skirts the back of some of Eaton’s posher houses with rolling lawns backing onto the river. And back to the car in time for Final Score, can’t be bad.

But do they show submerged stakes?

2010-10-16T12:11:00.001+01:00

REMEMBER Hamilton’s Navigations? The indispensable guide to the Broads for all boat owners? It ran for 34 editions between 1935 and 2001. In between local info and historical titbits, it helped you discover where it was safe to moor. You cross-referenced between sections of a pull-out map and notes in the book to discover “Reeds up to within 150 yds of Surlingham Ferry Inn, where there are submerged stakes and therefore bad moorings.”

(That’s a quote from the fifteenth edition – pictured - priced seven shillings and sixpence, just so you know.) Anyway the Broads Authority might just have unveiled the 21st century equivalent. Click on Boating and then hydrographical survey from their website and you get offered the entire sweep of the Yare from Norwich down to the Berney Arms, reach by reach. The section I’ve cut and pasted above shows the river looping past Surlingham and Brundall. Quite apart from their usefulness for boatowners, I think the maps also look good, artistic even, in their own right. What would Claud Hamilton would make of them I wonder?

Andrew Marr on bloggers

2010-10-10T21:40:00.001+01:00

“A lot of bloggers seem to be socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed, young men sitting in their mother’s basements and ranting…’

BBC legend Andrew Marr at the Cheltenham Literature Festival

Damn, rumbled at last…..

Half pint, half mended

2010-10-06T21:27:00.001+01:00

REMEMBER this little beauty from Rockland Dyke in the Spring? She’s Half Pint, the boat with the impossibly heavy cabin made from decking. We all laughed and said she’d sink. And then she sank and we all laughed. Well it looks as if Half Pint is about to be reborn. The new owner – at least I think it’s a new owner – posts as Half Pint on the Norfolk Broads forum. He’s ditched the decking, made a new driver’s seat and hopes to be on the water by November. Whether any of us will actually recognise her without that, err, distinctive, cabin is another issue altogether.

* Thanks to Tony P for his help with this one.

The Southern Bypass – by canoe

2010-10-02T14:42:00.001+01:00

THE MORE you look, the more you realise what a great city Norwich is for canoeing. While the websites might point you to the Broads or North Norfolk, I think the young Yare has got an awful lot going for it, especially on a stunningly beautiful October morning. I started at Lakenham, making use of a gap between houses on Old Lakenham Hall Drive. Heading upstream against a strong-ish current, the houses soon disappear on your right while the railway looms on the left. But in between is an undeclared nature reserve, full – this morning at least – of heron, cormorants, long tailed tits, jays and one particularly blue kingfisher. Later the rooftops reappear and you realise what great views the council houses of Theobald Road have across this valley. You then have to do a canoe version of the limbo dance to get under a very low railway bridge before shooting the spectacularly high Lakenham viaduct (pictured).

One of the many joys of canoeing is that unique “Access all Areas” feel. And from the viaduct onwards you are in country accessible to no-one but the landowners. Just me and two swans shared the stretch down to Harford Bridges, although two marsh harriers provided aerial support. Next time I’ll go in at Harford and try to make it to Cringleford. And then perhaps Cringleford up as far as Colney. For a river that essentially follows Norwich’s southern bypass, it’s amazingly serene.

The official Wherryman’s Way sock ..apparently

2010-10-01T12:49:00.001+01:00

I’M LEFT scratching my head after looking up my Wherryman’s Way book on Amazon. Apparently customers who bought it, also bought Bill Bryson’s “An informal history of private life”, the latest biography of the Queen Mum and a pair of “Bridgedale endurance trekker men’s socks”, yours for roughly a tenner. What can it all mean and should they be selling them in Jarrolds?

Is it the end for The Swan?

2010-10-01T10:38:00.001+01:00

THE LODDON Swan is likely to be closed until at least Christmas, according to its owners Enterprise Inns. The pub closed its doors in a hurry two weeks ago and now its entire future seems in doubt. When I’ve approached pub companies after other closures, they have always stressed how keen they are to get new people in quickly. Not so on this occasion. Enterprise Inns’ message today was that The Swan won’t be re-opening any time soon and “all options are still open”. One of those options presumably, would be selling this old coaching inn off for housing. So why here and why now? Well the final straw seems to have been a burglary a few days or weeks before the pub shut its doors. The pub was being managed by London Taverns. Their man tells me thousands of pounds were stolen. That prompted LT to hand it back to Enterprise Inns …And that’s prompted Enterprise Inns to start wondering what’s best for the future.

Brundall boys go fishing

2010-09-30T21:04:00.001+01:00

SIX likely lads perched on the ferry jetty at Brundall sometime early in the twentieth century. …Just one of hundreds of photos on the Brundall Archive, a website I’ve only just come across. Across the other side of the river lies Coldham Hall at Surlingham; you can just make out one of the boatsheds owned by the pub on the extreme left of the picture. Anyone wanting the ferry simply had to ring the bell. Thanks to Gerry for permission to use the shot. Lots more great pictures here.

The YNR: the Wherryman’s Way for sailors

2010-09-25T19:49:00.001+01:00

HERE’S the photographic proof of what a spectacle the Yare Navigation Race is. Not taken by me I hasten to add, my compact just doesn’t get this clarity or this crispness. No, this is one of 97 taken by Sue Hines and showing on her flickr site. She uses a Canon EOS Rebel T1i. The next two show Billy Bluelight and Anne both setting off from Coldham Hall. Thanks Sue for allowing me to show them here.

Remembering Broad + High

2010-09-25T08:11:00.001+01:00

ON the crest of a small hill between Whitlingham and Bramerton, the Wherryman’s Way passes a field which overlooks Kirby Marshes. It’s a good part of the walk; you finally feel as if you’ve left Norwich behind and you’re striking out across the Yare Valley. Were you to trespass across that field, you would find a plaque in memory of four American airmen. They lost their lives when a Liberator bomber named Broad + High crash-landed there on August 18th 1944. That much I knew. That much is in my book. More importantly that much is formally remembered in a plaque (pictured) within St Andrew’s Church, Kirby Bedon.

What I didn’t know until I opened today’s EDP, was how the villagers had kept in touch with some of the airmen who survived. The pilot Roger Leister, writes Steve Snelling, had returned to Kirby many times, building a strong bond of friendship with the “Kirby Kids” who remembered that awful day. Steve has written a very moving article that makes clear how Mr Leister thought he was choosing a flat field, only to realise it actually included a “treacherous bank that was invisible from the air but proved a fatal barrier for the battle-ravaged and flak-ruptured Liberator”.

Mr Leister, from Pennsylvania, died last year. Tomorrow his ashes will be scattered over that same field after a service of dedication at St Andrew’s at 11am. Somehow I don’t think I’ll be trespassing in that direction again.

* Read the full story by turning to pages 30 and 31 here.

YNR 2010: What happens when the wind drops

2010-09-23T21:06:00.001+01:00

A QUIET pint with Mrs Wherryman at Coldham Hall on Saturday evening had me in a historical mood. The car park was packed but the pub was deserted. They’d all set sail several hours earlier and had yet to return. Because it was the day of the Yare Navigation Race, the one day of the year when sail really does dominate and anyone with an inboard or an outboard sticks to their moorings. Every year dozens of river cruiser class boats race from Coldham Hall to Breydon Water and back. “"And back” being the tricky bit this time around. At 6.30 only one crew had made it home – pictured above. Apparently the wind had dropped suddenly, leaving dozens of boats limping home slowly. The pub looked well prepared. Lots of staff and a big outside BBQ to complement the kitchen. They just didn’t have any guests.

And so to the historical bit. It must have been just like this in the old days. I had a vision of a gnarled old publican coming outside to sniff the wind. Would a dozen wherries come round the corner any moment or were they already getting drunk downriver at the Buckenham Ferry? Wherrymen didn’t have cars to return to, and they didn’t have mobiles either.

On Saturday we left before the rest returned. I’m sure they got there eventually and I’m sure Natalie and George somehow made sure the bangers weren’t burnt.

* There are some great pictures from the race on this Flickr set by SuPine.

The Swan-song at Loddon ?

2010-09-17T19:23:00.001+01:00

I’VE ALWAYS been amazed that Loddon and Chedgrave can continue to support four pubs when so many other villages have already seen their last one disappear. Well tonight, they’re down to three. A piece of paper has just gone up outside The Swan saying it’s closed “until further notice”. The landlord is in the process of moving out and the curtains are firmly shut. Historically it was the grand old coaching inn. In recent years it’s fallen on harder times. But for now the old rule remains - there’s always one Wherryman’s Way pub in crisis

Wherries and Waterways: the movie premiere

2010-09-17T15:00:00.001+01:00

ONE for the diary in November. The Wherry Yacht Charter charity has organised a film show called “Wherries and Waterways” with footage from the excellent East Anglian Film Archive. You’ll probably know that the WYC does vital but expensive work keeping Hathor, Olive and Norada afloat. Normally they have at least one boat on tour which helps keep the flag flying and the funds flowing. This year they’ve all been under restoration, hence events like this one.

* The show takes place at the Assembly House in Norwich on Friday November 19th. Doors open at 7pm, the film begins at 7.30pm. For tickets call Pauline Simpson on 01692 630674. They’re £9 in advance and £10 on the day. Price includes interval refreshments.

Wherryman’s web milestone

2010-09-17T11:54:00.001+01:00

WHERRYMAN’S WEB has just registered its 10,000th hit since it was set up in February 2009. The first post was about the Slaughters ..and so – by complete coincidence - was the last one. I’ll try to be more original in future. See that first effort here.

Rockland Broad: The Slaughters

2010-09-16T21:05:00.001+01:00

THE SLAUGHTERS is the graphic name for the remains of 13 wherries sunk on Rockland Broad sometime in the middle of the 20th century. I’ve blogged before about how a few sodden timbers emerge at low tide if you’re in the right place at the right time in a canoe. But which one’s which and how do we know? This diagram is, I think, the only solid evidence. I’ve got this copy from Broads fan Chris Bird. He’s pretty sure that it was made in the 1950s by members of the Wherry Trust who went around the broads seeing what could be salvaged. It is very precise – even to extent of naming which boats formed which islands.

Because while some of the wherries sank, others seem to have collected enough soil above the water line to become homes for first small plants and later fairly substantial trees. They are perhaps the world’s largest plant pots with the roots of the willows forming more permanent anchors for the wherries than anything man ever established. Today as this picture makes clear they provide excellent nest sites for swans.

I love the Slaughters. Sometimes I think there might be a case for excavating and preserving them; turning them into a floating, boardwalking museum. But most of the time I just enjoy their mysterious isolation. There’s plenty of history tied up above and below the surface of Rockland Broad. But seeing less means you can imagine more.

Can anyone remember Pull’s last ferryman?

2010-09-12T21:52:00.001+01:00

THIS is one of the most photographed scenes in Norwich – Pull’s Ferry on the River Wensum in Norwich. It is named after John Pull who kept the ferry and adjoining pub for much of the first half of the 19th century. The building of course goes back a lot longer. It is – in Norwich historian Frank Meeres’s words the “medieval water gate of Cathedral Close”. That’s a reminder that the river use to double up as city wall. So when there was a canal up to the cathedral, it had to protected with a gate. But how long did that ferry last I wonder? Thorpe Hamlet’s historian says it stopped after Norwich City moved from The Nest to Carrow Road in the mid-1930s. Meeres says 1943 and elsewhere I’ve read of even later dates. Even if it was 1935, that leaves it in living memory – just. So can anyone help me find an old Norwich bor or gal who might just remember the last ferryman? We’re pretty sure he was Cecil Mollett who had five daughters, Dorothy, Eileen, Betty, Gladys and Marjorie. His wife was Lily and Dorothy married Herbet “Joe” Henning. Email me at steveanddebbie.silk@virgin.net if you can help. Until I find that precious eye-witness we’ll have to make do with author R H Mottram’s memories of the 1890s:

“It was one of the treats of my childhood,” he wrote “to be taken across the deep, slow-flowing water, by the laconic old ferryman who ‘quanted’ Norfolk-fashion with a long pole, he did not row. And when landed safely on the other side, what fun to sit on the grass of the tow-path of those days and watch the slow but capacious wherries go gliding past.”

Cantley’s slipway to success

2010-09-08T14:59:00.001+01:00

IT’S the other side of the river from the Wherryman’s Way, but Yare fans might still be interested in a bash at Cantley later this month. The authorities have chosen the Yare Navigation Race day to unveil hundreds of thousands of pounds of new facilities and prove that there’s more to Cantley than just its sugar works. More than £300,000 has been spent on everything from new moorings to that rarest of things, a new slipway. The village will also now have a £35,000 floating pontoon, new picnic tables, seating on the village green and new trees. Robert Beadle, Chairman of the Parish Council, is quoted as saying: "For many years we have sat by the river with no access to it. But at last we have a beautiful and safe area where people can sit and picnic by the river, fish and launch their boats. I am sure it will give many years of pleasure and will be a facility that the residents of Cantley can be proud of." The new facilities will be opened at 11am on Saturday 18 September. Among the other attractions on the day will be bands, a folk group singing sea shanties, clog dancing, pupils from Cantley School dressed as pirates and a performance by the St Edmunds Youth Orchestra from Acle outside the Reedcutter Public House.

* Full Broads Authority press release here.

Wanted: Wherryman’s Way hecklers

2010-09-05T19:10:00.001+01:00

A QUICK diary note on the Chet Valley Festival of Arts next Saturday. I’ll be doing a talk on the Wherryman’s Way at 3.30 and 5.30pm. It takes place in the meadow next to Loddon Church – I’ll be the one sharing a tent with a couple of reedcutters, I’m told. Please come along if you can, if only because I’m a lot better if I’ve got an audience who interrupts, heckles and generally sticks their oar in. Oh and there will be books to sign too – of course.

Great news for the Swallowtail

2010-08-05T14:46:00.001+01:00

I’VE only seen one once, fluttering across a boardwalk at Ranworth. It was several years ago, before I knew how special it was, before I appreciated that the Broads was just about the only place in this country where you could see the Swallowtail butterfly. They used to be much more common of course. But that was in the days when reed and sedge cutting was a genuine industry; fuelled by the demand for thatch and marsh hay for the horses which pulled London cabs. As Britain started its long love affair with the internal combustion engine, the marshes become overgrown. One of the many consequences was that milk parsley – the main food for the Swallowtail caterpillar - found itself shaded out. But since the 1990s there’s been a “fen management strategy” to replace Edwardian industry. And today the Broads Authority is able to trumpet the first increase in Swallowtail numbers for a century – a remarkable milestone.

* The Broads Authority says the best places to see the swallowtail are at How Hill, near Ludham, Hickling Broad and the Strumpshaw Fen near Brundall. Do any cross the Yare from Strumpshaw into Wherryman’s Way country? Let me know if you spot them. Full press release here. Photo taken from Broads Authority press release.

Inner city kingfishers: Norwich by canoe

2010-08-03T22:20:00.001+01:00

INSTRUCTIONS: Park as close as you can to the Halfords roundabout in Norwich. Yomp your canoe across the inner ring road and along the riverside path towards the New Mills pumping station – the head of navigation on the Wensum. Just downstream there are some steps down to the water’s edge. Float your boat and set off on a journey through Norwich like no other. The first thing that strikes you is the absence of noise. Traffic is hurtling past Toys R Us just a few yards to your right, but here on the Wensum you might as well be in another world. Next, as you paddle down under St Miles bridge you realise how low you are. Three-storey town houses (and boy, do you realise how many there are in Norwich) tower over you. Further on you start to unintentionally eavesdrop on other people’s lives as riverside dwellers leave their windows open. There was quite a row going on in one of the ground floor rooms at the art college as I drifted silently by. And everything seems closer. Duke Street becomes St George’s, becomes Fye Bridge very quickly. Before you know it you’re sweeping past the courts and on to Cow Tower to join the hire boats south of Bishop’s Bridge. There is plenty of plant life in this river. To my amateur eye, it feels a lot healthier than those stretches of the Yare I’ve paddled along. Damsel and dragon flies mobbed me wherever I went and I also spotted two kingfishers in full flight. It was inner city alright, just a Broads kind of inner city.

* Picture shows the canoe on the return journey just south of the medieval Bishop’s Bridge.

Great walk, shame about the ending

2010-07-31T21:02:00.001+01:00

I’VE MENTIONED the Wherryman’s Way’s Achilles’ heel before – it ends next to Asda. Specifically it ends with a small monument between the supermarket and a down-at-heel bridge (pictured) on the outskirts of Great Yarmouth. That bridge takes you over the Bure en route to the magnificent Hall Quay – famously compared to that of Marseilles by Daniel Defoe.

“The river lies on the west side of the town, and being grown very large and deep, by a conflux of all the rivers on this side [of] the county, forms the haven; and the town facing to the west also, and open to the river makes the finest quay in England, if not in Europe, not inferior even to that of Marseilles itself.”

The trouble is that once over the bridge you have to pass through a down-at-heel part of town to get there. Acres of sumptuous Yarmouth history lie a few hundred yards away but the town isn’t exactly putting out the welcome mat for first-time walkers. Which is why it was great to read in today’s EDP that there are plans to renovate the bridge – although frustratingly the details aren’t online.

This area still has industry – providing much needed jobs I know. But if there was a way of smartening up this stretch of the road called North Quay – or even opening up the river frontage near Lime Kiln Walk – the tourist trade might just bring in a few much-needed bucks too.

Reedham Beer Festival next weekend

2010-07-16T09:28:00.001+01:00

REEDHAM Beer Festival takes place next weekend. Wherryman’s Way IPA will be among 59 real ales jockeying for attention at the bash. More details on the Humpty Dumpty website.

In perpetuity: Berney Arms railway station

2010-07-13T20:30:00.001+01:00

YOU might like this article in The Guardian on the tiny railway station at Berney Arms. Journalist David McKie meets a man on the train who can’t understand why people would want to walk to the isolated Berney Arms pub. “What's the point?” the man asks. “There are plenty of decent pubs in Yarmouth.” He’s obviously not a Wherryman’s Way fan. The station is famously isolated, and since there are very few trains and no public road, you are likely to walk a long way back home. McKie continues:

‘The question "what's the point?" has been asked about Berney Arms station ever since its creation in the 1840s. One might assume the pub was the reason for putting it there, but that isn't the case. It is there because Thomas Trench Berney, who owned the land, was ready to sell to the railway company only on the condition that a station be put there "in perpetuity".So the station opened, with a row of cottages built alongside it, one of whose rooms served as the ticket office. And right from the start, hardly anyone used it; so much so that within a decade the company announced its trains would no longer stop there. What about our agreement? Berney protested. Ah, said the railway company, what we promised was that the station was there in perpetuity. We didn't say that our trains would stop there in perpetuity.’

After a row trains did start stopping again – and they have done ever since. Moreoever against all the odds the pub and a windmill have also survived in this most desolate of spots. Will they continue – in that marvellous phrase - in perpetuity? Let’s hope so.

* Photo pinched from Branchline Britain

Billy Bluelight rides again

2010-07-09T12:29:00.001+01:00

BILLY Bluelight was a Norfolk eccentric who – in the absence of a welfare state – lived on his wits and his charm. He’s one of the Wherryman’s Way most iconic characters, famous for racing the steam pleasure boats along the River Yare from Bramerton to Norwich – hoping for spare change from the passengers on board. His equally famous rhyme – which has to be delivered in a Victorian Norfolk accent - runs as follows:

“My name is Billy Bluelight, my age is 45. I hope to get to Carrow Bridge before the boat arrive.”

Incidentally, it works a lot better if you say “Carra” for Carrow. I mention him here because he’s just been reincarnated outside Rosy Lee’s teashop in Loddon as part of this weekend’s Scarecrow Festival in the town. Rosy Lee’s is run by Caroline Dwen, who “commissioned” it from one of her regular customers. You’ll see the rhyme has been updated in the shop’s honour.

Billy Bluelight gets a good mention in my book including this charming memory from one of the dozens of people who wrote into the EDP after his death in 1949. This man’s family houseboat was moored every year at Bramerton:

“At half past eleven or so every morning, the tinkle of a harp would intrude upon the cooing of the wood pigeons, heralding the approach of the Yarmouth Belle or the Waterfly with her big freight of Yarmouth trippers bound for Norwich.

“Simultaneously, a strange figure would take up a stance just past the houseboat. Clad in shorts and a singlet, and hung with a prodigious array of medals, his expansive smile seemed to be exactly duplicated at a higher level by the peak of a gaily-striped cricket cap.”

He would deliver his rhyme and then sprint off.

“At the Woods End he would be no more than level, but once out of sight he was able to gain a bit on the short cut across the Whitlingham Sewerage Farm, to reappear neck and neck by the old limekiln at Crown Point.

Once more Billy would disappear from view, and while the boat passed very slowly through bends and narrow waters unsuited to her, Billy had to make the detour over Trowse Bridge; but by the time Carrow Bridge was reached (the old bridge by Carrow Works) there would be Billy, ready to receive the well-earned plaudits of the trippers and the coppers thrown onto the path by the Boom Tower.

Year after year the performance was repeated, but Billy’s age remained 45! This may have been for the sake of the rhyme, but there was enough of the Peter Pan in him to have justified it on other grounds. Peace to his memory.”

If you can’t make Loddon this weekend, a more permanent statue can be found outside the Woods End pub. Peace to his memory indeed.

Cardigans and sandwiches or magical waterland?

2010-07-03T08:18:00.001+01:00

I’M READING “Say Goodbye to the Cuckoo” by Michael McCarthy. It explores the mystery and the history of bird migration in a very readable way ..even to birding novices like myself. I’m not even half way through it yet, but the reason I mention it here is because on page 69 you get this description of the Norfolk Broads:

“Throughout most of my life I had thought of the Norfolk Broads as a joke. Try as I may, I cannot recall any other landscape whose mention triggered mirth, but this complex of shallow lakes and winding rivers behind the coast always seemed to me irresistibly comic, probably because its principal purpose appeared to be the fostering of a peculiarly English summer ritual; the boating holiday. Not the sort of vacation afloat which nowadays takes place off somewhere like southern Turkey, with bronzed bodies, chilled rose and a keel sweeping through the sea; this was an altogether more cautious affair of cardigans and ham sandwiches in a craft called a cabin cruiser – a damp version of a caravan – which chugged from broad to broad with Dad at the helm in a sailor’s cap. Not sweeping but chugging. Pretend-adventure. It seemed to encapsulate the timorous smallness of English life in the 1950s and 1960s when thousands upon thousands of families went safely a-chugging in these 150 miles of lock-free waterways. I still find it hard to believe they never made a Carry On film about it all: Carry on Boating or, more probably Carry On up the Broads.”

Oh dear. This guy is “one of Britain’s leading writers on the environment” including spells as environment correspondent for both The Times and The Independent. He writes beautifully and knows his stuff, but is at least a generation out of date on what’s going on up here. Admittedly, he does go on in his book – published last year - to be utterly captivated by the River Yare, indeed he is introduced to what he calls “the soundscape of birds” by the Yare’s official ambassador Mark Cocker.

But in the very week that the Broads was rebranded “Britain’s Magical Waterland”, it’s this “cardigans and ham sandwiches” view that still sends a shiver down my spine. Not everyone liked the rebranding. “Mandarins at Minitrue will be busy. We have always sailed on Britain's Magical Waterland. The Norfolk Broads never existed,” snorted one tweeter.

But while new brooms at Coldham Hall and Hardley Mill and Langley Abbey show the way ahead, Say Goodbye to the Cuckoo shows that old-fashioned perceptions of the Broads remain remarkably resilient.

* Britain’s magical waterland EDP report.

A greener Ferry Boat

2010-06-26T20:31:00.001+01:00

THOSE new owners of the old Ferry Boat in Norwich really mean business. You’ll recall they want to convert what was the last pub in King Street into an eco-youth hostel, charging as little as £9.50 a night, and hiring out bikes and canoes. Well now we’ve got a little more flesh on those green bones. “We're looking at things like straw bale building, wooden frame structure, whole-roof photovoltaic, solar panels to heat all the hot water,” Jason Borthwick told the Evening News. “We're hoping it will be something really quite different and what we're looking for at the moment is interesting, innovative ideas.” There’s much more on this at www.norwichbackpackers.co.uk

A new Abbey habit down at Langley

2010-06-24T13:17:00.001+01:00

IT’S about two years now since I first wandered around the ruins of Langley Abbey, amazed at how much medieval history survives there. The church from this once huge complex may have long since disappeared, but substantial buildings remain amid a much larger farming estate. Back then a visit was a treat offered to very few of us – indeed for my book I was specifically asked to say that it wasn’t open to the public. But now all that has changed. And how. Since the beginning of the month it’s been open to everyone, six days a week. The atmospheric lighting and classy information boards make it unrecognisable from the dusty old buildings I previously encountered. Less than 500 years ago this abbey would have been simultaneously the commercial, spiritual and cultural centre for miles around. It’s great to see it being cherished and restored.

Manager Natalie Wilson (pictured centre with colleagues Lisa Wilson and Ann Morris) told me it was the culmination of nearly ten years of effort. Much of the funding had come from Natural England via their Higher Level Stewardship scheme, which encourages farms to preserve historic buildings. And as well as the abbey, there are tea rooms and a shop which sells Langley Longhorn beef – the cattle are of course grazed on the surrounding fields. For me, it’s yet another indication of the Wherryman’s Way effect. The walk attracts walkers. The walkers need feeding and watering. But they’re a discerning bunch who like proper history and a bit of geography and natural history too. Slowly but surely they are attracting a similar breed of business people. From Whitlingham to Coldham Hall from Langley Abbey to the Humpty Dumpty Brewery, a new generation of high quality attractions is starting to flourish.

* Langley Abbey open 10am to 4pm. Closed Mondays except Bank Holidays. Admission £4, concessions and children £2. Much more on the Abbey’s history in my Wherryman’s Way book which is on sale in the abbey shop.

This weekend: a rare Yare frolic

2010-06-22T22:35:00.001+01:00

EVER been to a water frolic? No me neither, but I do know they used to be all the rage in Victorian times. Think a fete on water and you get the general idea. This weekend the Yare Sailing Club holds its third frolic in the 25 years since it was reformed in 1985. It all takes place at Surlingham Ferry House (pictured) this weekend. Among the attractions; canoe demos, topper racing, folk music and a hog roast. And given that we’re on the Wherryman’s Way, it’s great to learn that the wherry Maud will also be in residence. Lots more on this page of the club’s own website. I’ll be signing copies of my book there on the Sunday between roughly 10am and 1pm.

Wherryman’s Way reviewed

2010-06-11T12:58:00.001+01:00

NEED an independent review of The Wherryman’s Way before you splash out? Cameron Self from Literary Norfolk has obliged. Click here for more details.