IS the world ready for Wherryman’s Way folk? The Norfolk band Rum Kelter have just confirmed they’ll be playing our book’n’beer launch tomorrow at Hardley Mill. Check them out at their myspace page. There’s Heidi on the whistle and French Pipes, Darren on guitar, Nik on bodhran and Pete (pictured) on the fiddle. And yes I’ll work out what a bodhran is tomorrow too. It all kicks off at 2pm. Details on the sidebar.
YOU might just have noticed that the weather forecast doesn’t look quite so clever for book launch day on Sunday. But have no fear. Hardley Mill might be in the middle of nowhere but it has a large, dry visitors centre and we are also erecting a large tent next door. And if that walk from Hardley Staithe doesn’t seem quite such a good idea, remember that a shuttle bus will be running direct from Langley with Hardley Village Hall. I’ll be signing copies of my book, while Humpty Dumpty are launching their new Wherryman’s Way IPA. (More than a pint of that stuff at 7.4 per cent and you won’t know what the weather is anyway….) All that plus free tea, coffee and cakes. I look forward to seeing you there between 2pm and 5pm.
* My reading of the latest windguru data is that we’ll be OK till about 4pm. Get in early I say.
THE WHERRYMAN’S Way book is available on the Wherryman’s Way at last.. Copies have been available at shops in Norwich and various other locations for while, but now you can buy it at Church Plain Stores in Loddon too. Alternatively, there’s the launch at Hardley Mill on Sunday afternoon. The details are on the sidebar…..fingers crossed on the weather.
FROM dealing with demanding away fans at a hotel in the centre of Ipswich to an idyllic riverside pub on the Norfolk Broads, it’s been a big change for the new couple in charge at the Woods End. Phil George and Paula Kirk took over here a month ago, but spent the first two weeks on a thorough clear out. In came the plumbers, out went the carpets.Ten skips have been filled with the detritus from this huge, magnificent boozer on the banks of the Yare. Longer term, says Paula, the plan is to extend the kitchen and have a second restaurant in a big function room upstairs. But for this summer at least they’ll concentrate on slowly but surely getting the word out. And what about my “boots as well as boats” manifesto? In other words will they look after Wherryman’s Way walkers who tend to arrive at a closed pub during the morning, gasping for a cup of tea? Well Paula’s on the case. Once all the paperwork is done, she says, they’ll get a licence to open up early. Good stuff eh? Oh and they bought a copy of my book. Well, with the Woods End on the front cover, it would have been rude not to….
NEXT time you’re walking the Wherryman’s Way, look out for a smallish, elegant boat called Pole Star. Inside you are likely to find Lorna and Richard Cracknell, a couple who love exploring the Yare from their home mooring at Brundall. So far so normal. But how many of the hundreds who do the same have had a song composed in their honour? Lorna and Richard’s daughter Liz has done just that. Don’t be put off by the mention of Beccles in the title, this is mostly a Yare love affair. Brundall Marina rhymes with “serener” and Reedham rhymes with freedom. WARNING: this song could make you want to sell the house and live on board for ever.
JUST a quick line to say there’s more on my Wherryman’s Way book in today’s EDP – the Sunday section. I was asked to write a few words on how it all started and there are some super photos by the paper’s photographer Bill Smith.You’ll find an online version here.
INTERESTING news from one of my favourite spots on the entire Wherryman’s Way – St Saviour’s Church at Surlingham. St Saviour’s, you might recall, is a ruin, a very atmospheric ruin a few hundred yards away from the village’s other church St Mary the Virgin. Ted Ellis is buried there and so are a few other lucky people. Anyway today I learnt from long-time Surlingham resident Fred Morris, that there is a campaign to “Save St Saviour’s”. At first I needed some convincing that it needs saving. It’s pretty perfect just sitting there, I always find. But Fred says that there are concerns that the masonry is so brittle it really needs attention and that people could do with an information board. I guess he’s right. In any case, the campaign is at a very early stage. As yet there’s no money. But if you like your ruins raw and full of nettles, you might want to get along sooner rather than later.
THE LIBRARY of Ted Ellis duly went under the hammer at Keys in Aylsham today. (For more on this eccentric Norfolk naturalist who made his home at Wheatfen Broad near Surlingham click here.) His collection of more than 2000 items – including sketches and much, much miscellania, raised almost £14000. It also, I’m told, attracted attention from all over the country. Some of the books went for hundreds of pounds, others for much less. Apparently the auction house was struck by how many non-collectors were there. It was as dozens of Ted fans turned up just wanting to take away something, anything, from the great man’s library.
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“Wherryman's Way IPA is brewed in the American pale ale style, which pays homage to the original strong but light-in-colour English ales that made the journey from Burton-on-Trent to Bombay, with a combination of locally grown Maris Otter pale malt and caramel malt for a deep golden colour with a refreshing dry flavour. Hopped with a combination of Target and Centennial hops and then dry-hopped in the cask with more Centennial and Simcoe hops, the beer is full of a funky citrus hop character like many of its cousins from across the pond.”
Funky citrus hops?…. Now I know it’s going to be a good bash.
* For all the details about the launch on June 6th see the side panel.
THE well-thumbed library of the naturalist Ted Ellis will go under the hammer next week. Many of the 2000 books come complete with his own scribblings. But as a well-written article in the EDP makes clear, this is only likely to add to their attraction at the auction in Aylsham on May 27th. I‘d love to make it along, as much for the people-watching as anything else. The county’s finest nature lovers will surely be out on patrol. Ted Ellis lived at Wheatfen Broad (pictured) – an isolated habitat which became a nature reserve under his careful stewardship. It lies between Surlingham and Rockland, off every beaten track bar one – the Wherryman’s Way. As the article makes clear – he was a protege of Arthur Patterson – the Great Yarmouth naturalist. My favourite book of his is Wildfowlers and Poachers. Apparently there’s a copy of that book in the collection signed: “To Edward Ellis, deputy author who helped me in shaping sentences”. Beautifully put, don’t you think?
A SWAN makes its nest on a semi-submerged boat just off Thorpe Old Reach. The old reach was the original course of the River Yare before the railway came to Norfolk in the 1840s – it’s the bit you see as you drive through Thorpe St Andrew. The new railway line from Norwich to Great Yarmouth bridged the river twice in less than a mile. And because the bridges were so low, engineers also dug out a “New Cut” to effectively give wherries a “Thorpe bypass”. That leaves an island in the middle – you see the other side of it if you walk along the banks at Whitlingham. Mother Swan has made her home within an even later bit of water, dug out during the height of the hire boat boom when many a Broads holiday started in Thorpe St Andrew. Hearts, Jenners and Wards were the big names here from the 1940s through – in part – to the 1990s. Now this vast basin within the island lies unused. Have a pint in the beer garden of the Town House pub to get a better view. Give or take an inquisitive canoeist with a camera, it should be a perfect place to bring up a young family.
GOOD news from Bramerton. The Woods End pub is to re-open on Saturday. And given that this beautiful riverside pub features on the front page of my book …it hasn’t come a moment too soon! Good luck to new tenants Philip and Paula. This is a perfect “location” boozer at which to enjoy a quiet pint on the way home. I’ll do exactly that – and report back – next week. More on why it closed here.
FANCY a stroll along the Wherryman’s Way with a pint of Wherryman’s Way IPA and a good book to read? Funnily enough, I know just the place. After five years, this book of mine is finally getting launched ..with the help of the Humpty Dumpty Brewery and the Friends of Hardley Windmill. Hardley Mill is the venue – I think it’s a suitably windswept, isolated place for a walk that celebrates the wild and the wet. The recently-restored mill will be open for the afternoon just for us. I’ll be signing copies of my book (£14.99, £3 goes to the Friends) and Humpty Dumpty will launch their new beer from an open-air bar. (The word is that it’s pretty strong, so there’ll be another “session beer” on sale as well.) All that plus free tea, coffee and cakes.
* See the right hand panel for all the other bits. I recommend the half-hour walk from Hardley Staithe.
SAT-NAVs are of course the work of the devil, but nevertheless I chuckled when I heard how they’re boosting takings down at Reedham Ferry. Apparently the GPS software regularly takes people along the route which connects the back end of Loddon to Reedham courtesy of the wonderful vehicle ferry.
The trouble is that people brainlessly follow the instructions …not realising there really is a ferry.They are genuinely gobsmacked to find a huge river between them and the next bit of road. It’s a brilliant example of the dangers of turning off your brain and not looking at a map. (Note for sat-nav users: rivers are helpfully marked in nice wavy blue lines.) Best of all, most of the hapless victims are businessmen and sales reps; the kind of people who are all suited and booted, but struggle with the concept of loose change. And then they offer the ferryman their credit card …which always goes down a storm.
*For full details on why you really shouldn’t have a sat-nav, try Map Addict by Mike Parker.
OK I give up. This is the photo I’ve been trying to emulate. A haunting image of the remains of some of the 13 wherries on Rockland Broad. Or rather within Rockland Broad. The wherries were deliberately sunk, meaning that their rotting timbers only emerge at low tide. They go by the dramatic name of The Slaughters - except that they never look quite as dramatic as in this photo. I know I was there at low tide this evening because a hire crusier was comically stuck on the putty in the middle of the Broad. (“Give us a tow mate,” they asked, as I paddled by in the canoe.) I find the timbers fine – you can see photos in my first blog entry – but they are just never as clearly exposed to the elements as in this wonderful shot, borrowed from the Wherryman’s Way leaflet. Still it was a good night to be on Rockland. I went down Rockland Dyke to the Broad, across and up Short Dyke to the Yare, past the old Strumpshaw pumping house and then back down the Fleet. All in all a good workout on a still Saturday evening.
* I see Simon Barnes has got the canoe bug. Read today’s The Times column here.
FOR every windmill that’s been restored or converted I would guess at least five or six have disappeared. But what about these forgotten stumps ..often in the middle of nowhere. This one is on the Reedham Ferry road at Nogdam End .At least as far as Ordnance Survey is concerned, it doesn’t have a name and it certainly doesn’t have much of a use, despite the corrugated iron extension. But it’s a beautiful spot on a crystal clear spring morning. The dyke next door throbs with bird life; today reed warblers were squabbling in the branches of the stunted trees. But best of all a pair of barn owls live inside. Be prepared for them to swoop out as you clamber in. Some places don’t need to be either restored or knocked down. They’re great just sitting there, quietly surviving.
WHAT next for the Woods End pub at Bramerton after it closed a month ago? Well the pub is one of 850 to be owned by the Wellington Pub Company down in Buckinghamshire. Their man tells me that it was under lease until May …presumably complicating plans for the future. However “we are currently making plans to re-let and re-open this site as soon as possible,” he says. He promises to keep me posted …which is exactly what he did when Coldham Hall – the company’s other Wherryman’s Way pub - got into trouble a year or so back. Of course Coldham Hall has since risen from the ashes under a new team. Let’s hope for a similar result up in Bramerton.
SO how many wherries are there left in existence? I’m ashamed to know that I didn’t know the answer until I came across the Wherry Yacht Charter website a few weeks ago. Mind you it depends what you mean by a wherry, so stand by for a short history lesson. The original wherries were of course waterborne HGVs, transporting huge cargoes up and down the Broads network. Two of these so-called trading wherries survive. Albion I’ve spoken about before, it’s looked after by the Norfolk Wherry Trust. Then there’s Maud, which was resurrected from the murky depths of Ranworth Broad by Vincent and Linda Pargeter in 1981. Trading wherries have black sails – they are often known as Black Sailed Traders. Next there are the white-sailed pleasure wherries. These were made to pretty much the same dimensions as the trading wherries, but they were fitted out – largely in Edwardian times – to cope with a growing tourist market. Hathor is the most famous of the three surviving pleasure wherries, the other two are Solace and Ardea. Finally there are the wherry yachts, which are much smaller and more manoeuvrable. Three of those have made it into the twenty-first century: Olive, Norada and White Moth. The Wherry Yacht Charter charitable trust owns Hathor, Olive and Norada – pictured above. There’s much more good stuff on the history of all eight on their website.
* I’ll be giving a talk to WYC members – and signing copies of my Wherryman’s Way book - at Surlingham Ferry House on June 11th. All welcome. Kick off 7.30pm.
