YNR 2010: What happens when the wind drops

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 ?

 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

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

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

 

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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.

Thank you

A HUGE thank you to everyone who came along to our book and beer launch at Hardley Mill on June 6th. No-one counted, but I’m going to guesstimate that more than 120 people were there to enjoy the  selection of real ale, real cakes and real folk music. I sold 84 copies of my book - meaning I can hand over a cheque for £252 to the windmill trust. Donations from the refreshments combined with the raffle to make another £200. In addition we made £37 profit from ice cream sales which will go to Loddon White Dolphins Swimming Club. Stephen George from the Humpty Dumpty Brewery reckons he sold about 100 pints on draught and dozens more in bottles. (Five pence per bottle will go to Norfolk County Council to help them maintain the Wherryman’s Way itself.)  Thanks to Frances Kirkpatrick and everyone involved at the mill for making us so welcome, including Nigel who got dozens of you there and back by minibus. Thanks too, to the band Rum Kelter, my family for running around all weekend and Gaby and Harry Horsman for great work as gatekeepers

* For more pictures try flickr. My ones are here. Cameron Self from Literary Norfolk took many more here.