Map 134: A Broads Journey – with a motor boat, paddleboard and not forgetting the cauliflower

30 April – 7 May 2022

My husband and I drove into Wroxham late in the morning on 30 April. The journey from our previous adventure in Southwold was uneventful, apart from taking a wrong turning and getting stuck in a traffic jam at Lowestoft. This was when we were trying to find the most easterly point on mainland Britain. The large concrete Euroscope sculpture must be the least signposted and most understated attraction in the town, situated on the edge of an industrial estate. However now I have been there (second visit for my husband) and I don’t need to go again unless I’m trying to bag the “cardinal extremities” on a single journey.

https://www.barnesbrinkcraft.co.uk/norfolk-broads-boating-holidays/boating-holidays/, from whom we were hiring the boat, had plied us with an enormous amount of reading and various compulsory safety videos to watch beforehand. This is hardly surprising given they are letting newbies like us loose on a boat which costs £150,000 to build and around £250,000 to buy. There is minimal tuition – about thirty minutes instruction on manoeuvring the boat during a short supervised drive. My husband sailed a dinghy in his youth and has had some experience with motor boats but it was all new to me as well as to our daughter and her fiancé who we had invited to join us on this adventure.

We arrived in Wroxham in a state of excited anticipation although tinged with some anxiety about how we would manage. The first priority was to buy provisions for the journey – my husband had assigned me the role of purser which meant that everything to do with food was part of my responsibility. Of course he was the self-appointed Captain – in the land of the blind the one-eyed person is King! However to be fair he had done the bulk of the preparation and he was the one signing the papers for us to hire the boat. Once in Wroxham, it was very easy to buy all the food we could have wanted as this is the location of https://www.roys.co.uk/storelocator/wroxham-food-hall the biggest village shop in UK. I was determined to prove that I was providing enough healthy food including fruit and vegetables – hence the cauliflower. I also had to ensure that the food was suitable for my daughter who follows a pescatarian diet. Moreover there wasn’t likely to be much food storage space on the boat so I couldn’t buy too much and would need to restock from small village shops when we moored.

Daughter and partner were met from the railway station and we arrived at the boatyard. We had already spotted our boat “Serenade 4” so parked nearby. The paperwork was completed quickly and efficiently and buoyancy aids distributed. I was shocked to realise that adults were provided with one where it was necessary to pull a tag for it to inflate and whether I would ever manage to pull it if I fell in; however as we were hiring a paddleboard too, we were provided with two further buoyancy aids which did not need activating.

My daughter and I had said that we would leave the driving to our partners. My husband had suggested that her role would be main deckhand involved with mooring – as well as navigation officer (she has a geography degree). However with such a small crew, we all had to multi-task. We piled our possessions on to the boat and the hired paddleboard and oar was secured to the roof. We were all ready for our lesson in boat handling.

My husband had first turn at supervised driving. Our instructor explained that it was important to do everything slowly and make small adjustments to the controls; after all the fastest we would travel was 6mph and most parts have 4-5mph speed limits. My husband was keen that another member of the group drove under supervision – somehow this turned out to be me and meant that I had to turn the boat to take our instructor back to the yard. I could barely stretch enough to see out of the front window and it was advised that when I drove for a longer period we could add a “booster” cushion to the seat. We had thought that we would practise supervised mooring but all that happened was a discussion when we confirmed that we understood the theory especially the need to moor against the tide and the knots to use to tie up the boat. Of course with six undergraduate degrees between the four of us as well as a masters degree, a doctorate and numerous professional qualifications, the theory wasn’t an issue but managing the practicalities was more likely to be a challenge.

Anyway it was soon time for us to be on our own. As it was the Saturday of a Bank Holiday weekend, the river was busy. However we seemed to manage and diverted behind Wroxham Broad Island through Wroxham Broad to experience broad sailing for the first time as well as river sailing. I was keen to visit Salhouse Broad where there is opportunity for paddle boarding off the beach but the Captain decreed that there was no time and we needed to progress to our planned overnight mooring. Unfortunately all the moorings in Horning were full or at least the spaces left looked too small for us to manage. My daughter’s vision of mooring overnight next to a picturesque riverside pub was fading fast.

In the meantime, said daughter was busy taking over the stern cabin and making the bed (a normal double bed). My husband and I were to have the smaller bow cabin – the advantage was that the others wouldn’t need to use it as a passageway as the way out of the boat was through the stern doors. However to make the bed a double we had to place an insert in the middle to form a trapezium shaped lying area – this made the room very cramped, putting the sheet on the bed interesting and getting in and out of the en suite shower room a challenge! Perhaps we should have bagged the stern cabin! The shower room is amazing – a toilet, basin and shower crammed into a space the size of a cupboard under the stairs at home. We also discovered the multiple cupboards with hanging space too – barely an inch of space is wasted and we had plenty of storage space.

Outside the boat, we passed rows of waterside homes, multiple reedbeds and saw many birds both on and off the water.

Eventually we managed to find a vacant mooring next to Cockshoot Broad Dike. The theory worked in practice and we were soon moored without mishap. The decision was made to walk along the footpath and quiet road to the Fur and Feather pub in the beautiful village of Woodbastwick comprising many thatched houses. It was deemed too early in the holiday to risk my cooking!

Our journey continued. Every day was different. All the people we met were friendly and helpful, keen to help out with any mooring difficulties, passing on their knowledge and experience – even if sometimes we discovered it was as minimal as ours.

We travelled up the twisty and narrow River Ant. Passing under Ludham Bridge was a challenge as it was little wider than the boat.

On our third full day we passed under the bridges at Great Yarmouth and crossed Breydon Water at low slack tide – this is necessary as the bridges only have sufficient clearance near low tide and the currents around the confluence of the Bure and the Yare are too strong to be safely passable in these boats at anything other than slack tide. The tide timings meant that we had to start our journey early in the morning before breakfast to reach the confluence at about 07.30am. We checked the tide times using the Aweigh app https://aweigh.co.uk/#/ and confirmed weather conditions were suitable by phoning the helpful yacht station staff at Great Yarmouth on the afternoons prior to our planned crossings. The return crossing a couple of days later was also an early start. The Breydon Water navigation channel is well marked with red and green posts – although some posts are missing the line taken to avoid running aground on the mud banks seemed clear to us.

We spotted many birds, some at very close range, although we didn’t see any elusive kingfishers. The warblers in the reeds were easier to hear than to see. Sadly we didn’t spot any otters.

We moored at various sites of interest and saw many more as we passed – windmills, an abbey, villages with interesting churches.

We passed the iconic Broads site of St. Benet’s Abbey a few times on our travels and managed to moor there to visit the site. This originated as a Benedictine Monastery dating from the eleventh century. It was the only monastery to escape dissolution under Henry VIII – part of a deal between the Abbot and the Crown. The monastery amassed debts and the last monks left in 1545. The buildings fell into disrepair. In the eighteenth century, a dual purpose drainage mill and oil mill (processing rape seed) was constructed on top of the gatehouse. It is Norfolk’s second oldest windmill. In the nineteenth century, the mill was a source of inspiration and painted many times by artists in the Norwich School of painting. In the twentieth century the site was recognised as a tourist attraction, a Holy place and an important archaeological site. in 1987 a large oak cross was commissioned from the Royal estate at Sandringham to mark the spot where the Abbey’s high altar would have been.

As we approached Reedham Ferry, a car arrived to cross. fortunately we were able to pass through before the chain ferry started its journey across the river.

My daughter and her fiancé caught a train to Lowestoft one afternoon to visit the museum with many exhibits relating to the local area. In the meantime I went for a run and then a walk around the Cantley area.

We had several stops to use the paddleboard. We all mastered kneeling on the board and going on short paddling journeys (apart from my husband who didn’t try in case it aggravated a pre-existing injury). In the end none of us tried standing on the board as on each occasion there was a reason why it seemed prudent not to try. Almost inevitably we would have fallen in the water! I was keen to try standing on the last day but by then we were down to my husband and I as the others had caught a train from Acle in order to travel to a friend’s wedding – the risk of getting into difficulties seemed too high. I did have two lessons prior to the holiday but hadn’t mastered standing on the board.

We experimented with using the mud anchor to secure ourselves in the middle of Rockland Broad so that we could launch the paddleboard from the back of the boat in mid broad. This was almost a disaster as, under the instruction of the captain, I let out the entire chain. We weren’t sure when the anchor had reached the bottom. The chain became disconnected from its sprockets. However after a phone conversation with an engineer at BarnesBrinkcraft (it was very easy to contact him), the two men managed to pull up the cable and re-engage the chain – in fact my daughter’s partner had already worked out the solution.

We tried to moor near Burgh Castle in order to visit the impressive Roman Fort. Sadly the tide was so low and predicted to go lower that, like another boat in the vicinity, we moored and then unmoored, realising that the step from boat to land was going to get too high for us to manage safely. Eventually we moored close to Polkey’s Drainage Mill overnight prior to our early morning crossing back to the northern Broads – even here the step to land was quite large. We really needed the recommended spring line mooring technique for wide tidal range at this point – fortunately we had already experimented with it the previous night at Cantley.

By the time that my daughter and her partner had to leave us, we had all taken turns at driving. The two men had become confident at driving during mooring and unmooring with use of the bow thruster to help the process. I managed to negotiate the return journey over Breydon Water with the turning at the river confluence as the currents meet. My daughter was somewhat less confident, although she blamed the conflicting advice she was given.

The catering had been acceptable – I hope the others would agree as I admit to some bias in this. We didn’t use the microwave but had made good use of the twin hot plate induction hob. All the electricity for cooking, light, hot water and even heating was electrical – generated via the diesel motor as we went along and supplemented by solar panels on the roof. With help from my daughter, I had managed to master the “touch” controls on the hob. On the mornings when we had not needed early starts we enjoyed sausages, bacon, vegetarian sausages etc. and had even bought some tomato ketchup on our way. On the evenings where there was no convenient nearby pub, I cooked passable meals – even the much discussed omelette wasn’t the subject of complaint in the end! Most of the food had been consumed, but we still had a standby supply for “emergencies”. However I still hadn’t worked out how to incorporate the cauliflower sensibly into any of the meals I had prepared! The said vegetable was clearly fresh when bought and of high quality; I hope it enjoyed its journey round the Broads as much as we did. It even survived the journey to Exeter, but has been consumed now.

We had agreed that I would get a good paddle boarding session on the final day after leaving the others at Acle Station. Eventually this exceeded our expectations. Our plan had been to mud anchor on Malthouse Broad to paddle board off the back of the boat and then moor overnight at Cockshoot Broad Dike before returning the boat to Wroxham. However on arrival at Malthouse Broad, the stern on mooring places on the “island” were entirely vacant apart from a single day boat. My husband decided that this was an ideal opportunity to make a first attempt at stern on mooring – plenty of space and few onlookers. This was accomplished and in fact proved much easier for single crew person mooring than side on mooring. We decided to stay there overnight. I had three paddle board journeys, launching off the island. We ate reserve food supplies on the boat. It was extremely quiet – a couple of other boats came and went and one other boat moored overnight. We mopped the outside of the boat ready to return it the next day in a clean condition. We photographed the huge Mississippi River Boat which visited the Broad.

Returning the boat was straightforward. The river was quiet so early in the morning and we arrived at BarnesBrinkcraft boatyard in Wroxham soon after 08.00am. We were directed to a service area where the toilets were pumped out and the boat refuelled before the boat man expertly drove the craft to the mooring point in the boatyard from where we had set out a week previously.

Would we do it again? The answer is a resounding “yes”. It was definitely an adventure with a difference and there are many other nooks and crannies on the Broads that we did not have time to explore on this, our first visit. We would also plan to hire again from https://www.barnesbrinkcraft.co.uk/norfolk-broads-boating-holidays/boating-holidays/ who were helpful and efficient at all stages of the holiday.