JennyMorgan

I know of several wooden boats that have had laminate floors fitted, all of which have been a spectacular disaster. Lot to be said for traditional boat floors, varnished or unvarnished planks of real wood.

Breydon must be daunting to a novice but the instructions are clear enough, indeed I don't know how they can be any clearer. I once watched a hireboat depart a well populated channel and head off across the mud flats and then two other boats followed it. We were in a sailing boat, quite clearly not aground, and those heading off for a grounding frantically waving at us, obviously convinced that they were in the right and we were in the wrong! We later found out that they were a school group!

Surely only one thing can be certain, that being that those of us who have never run aground on Breydon can not, for the the very lives of us, understand how on earth anyone else can get it all so wrong. After all, doing it right is just so easy!

Not up to hedgehogs then, they taste like 'hen tit', breast of chicken to posh folk!

Ah ha, the infamous, nocturnal dory race. Not held in recent years, not since the Boat House Party has been sanitised.

Vaughan, not quite the Broads and probably hell if one one suffers from galloping ranidaphobia!.

John, that second shot is a cracker, real calendar material, thanks for sharing.

The light and colour was magic, just not enough of it for a picture, that and I hadn't taken my camera, sorry!

Came back from the WRC this evening. As we turned into Oulton Dyke the wind dropped, eventually to absolutely nothing. Did we fire up the aluminium donkey, did we heck! Gorgeous evening, the tide was going our way, we weren't in a hurry. The mist was laying feet deep across the marshes and overflowing the reed fringed margin and spilling onto the river. Coupled with the greys, mauves and pinks of a subdued sky, the evening that accompanied our drift back to our moorings was magic. Just thought that those of you away from the Broads would like to know that!

Us locals don't call Kessingland Little London for nothing! Was a time though . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Might live there now, doesn't necessarily mean that they are Pakefield folk . Says one who's fairly straight, maternal family tree goes back at least four hundred years, in Pakefield!!

Saw that & wondered what on earth possessed five people to go fishing in a relatively low freeboard twelve footer. Not just five people but also fishing tackle for five people.

Lot to be said for it!

Re that post card of Belaugh, this is the one: Considering that my shop was about as far as its possible to be from Belaugh and that probably only a fraction of purchasers actually went there I can only assume that it was regarded as a quintessentially Broadland scene. The other big seller was this one of Hunsett Mill: Interestingly both feature sailing rather than motor cruisers, I wonder why?

Can be or is eye-watering? Twelve bob or so to send a letter, frightening!

Certainly is, not sure if its a good or a bad thing, central government meddling in country matters. I see such traps being openly sold locally so I suspect quite a few do it. As a kid I went to a school that had a mile or so of River Wensum running through its grounds so we used to hunt & trap the native crayfish back then, jolly good eating they were too, Mind you, anything was good eating compared to the institutionalised school fodder, even the occasional pike or coypu.

Too true, especially if you are in such as the sheds at Martham for example. Didn't realise that you were quite that ancient, Pops. Judging by some of the jokes I take it that you are a fully paid up DOM? Dirty old man to the uninitiated!

One day, Robin, you will be promoted by being given a 'real' boater's key ring. Real boaters have cork balls.

Even for people in their 60s it was the done thing. Back in the 70's, when I had the riverside shop at Burgh St Peter, I sold them literally by the thousand every week. Pictures of Hunsett Mill & Belaugh Church outselling all others by far. The kill was not the cost of the card but the rise in postage. Now folk send a snap using the phones, bit of a shame really.

Just curious, Stuart, why the problem with crayfish trapping? Beccles, for example, is awash with the non indigenous signal crayfish, surely trapping and removing them is no bad thing? Glad to see that you are on the case over fishing licences, It doesn't appear to be so at Oulton Broad, for example, with Suffolk Constabulary, A few warning signs in tackle shops mightn't go amiss.

As a 70 year old I still do the work, just takes me twice as long as it used to!

It needn't be a problem . . . . . . http://www.incontinencechoice.co.uk/shopbybrand/tena-incontinence-products.html?gclid=CJqs3f3Qlc4CFROeGwodROYD5A

A name is for life, not just for a christening. As a society we are terrible snobs really. Not only are we judged by the names that we inflict on our children but also the breed of dog we own, how we talk, whether we do or don't do aerobics with our hands as we chat away on on our mobile phones, the list goes on and on!

Cost, Derek, is the killer. I was talking to the owner of an immaculate wooden thirty footer the other day, tells me that to have his cruiser decorated alone is over £2,000.00 per year including slipping.

It's not the BA that is the problem this time, it is other people, plain & simple. We had a plastic jobby inelegantly impale itself on our bowsprit the other day, lovely sound of splintering g.r.p., the nincompoop! We were on our mooring minding our own business and he came way too close to have a look and as he went away swung his stern towards rather than away from us. No damage though,not even a mark, Broads bowsprits are tough old jobs and best avoided!