Paul

With the events of recent times there has been a public outpouring of gratitude towards our NHS, the front line fighters in the battle against the pandemic. But has this actually manifested in anything more than words, and a few evenings stood on our doorsteps clapping? Are we doing anything more tangible to demonstrate that gratitude. Sadly, my recent experience suggests not. Jamie, our eldest came into hospital, from where I write this missive, on Tuesday for surgery which hasn't quite gone as we might have hoped. An expected one or two nights stay has already become four, and looks likely to run into weeks. I have to say I have been very disappointed by the behaviour of some accompanying parents. There are those who, bearing in mind we are in hospital in a local lock down seem to feel the rules on visiting don't apply to them. Parents lucky enough to be taking their little darlings home who are happy to leave their bed space looking like a bombsite with litter on the floor, toys all over the bed. Parents who seem unable to make and strip their own folding beds but wait for the nurse to do it, who could much better spend their time doing something more important, like being a nurse rather than a maid. Most disgraceful though the lady, and I use that term loosely who had a raging argument with staff, bad language and all in the middle of a children's ward because visiting dispensation was given to the father of a little girl with down syndrome to visit briefly last night to try and settle the little tot who was getting quite upset and crying for him. No madam, that doesn't mean your sister should be allowed to visit your teenager with a septic foot. The staff have been wonderful to Jamie and I, so thank you NHS Its a shame those three little words seem to be so quickly forgotten by so many.

Didn't Formby once own a cottage on the Repps bank at Potter? Down towards Repps Staithe IIRC

A true hero of the people. A role model to us all ...

ah, but still only one person ever flies it, and 95% of the time that's the computer.

And you think that's a defence? Asleep in charge of a vessel, must be worth a good keel hauling!

am i the only one concerned with the title of this thread. I never realised that boating on the broads was a competition to see how many hire boats you can damage. Do you get a reward for a hat trick, footballers get the match ball, what could we give a boater? Is there a league table? Do you put a little sticker on the cockpit wall when you "bag one" like the flying aces of WWII? I thought the navigation bylaws require all skippers to do all possible to avoid contact. Silly me!

My understanding is that you must inform the BA when placing the boat into brokerage, toll exemption cannot be backdated. I could be wrong but a phone call to them will confirm.

Of the options then South Walsham, though much prefer Barton to either.

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, well almost twenty years ago in "another place" I posted a photo of Potter Heigham Bridge. I had, in my own haphazard way photo shopped it with a barrier across the span and a notice, "Navigation Closed, By Order, Broads Authority & RSPB. The post was in response to two threads running at that time, one debating the disturbing rise in the influence of the RSPB and other organisations and the second the declared intention of the BA to seek authority to close any part of the navigation as and when it saw fit. Without exception my post drew derision and contempt. Well here we are twenty years later and it hasn't happened .... yet.

They seem to have the skills at Herringfleet, or at least claim to. Not only to restore it but to teach the skills to apprentices and if we are to believe what we heard on Countryfile the other night then there are plenty of people eager to learn those skills. Not all mills will be saved, not all mills can be saved. It was a part of the natural progression of broadland that these structures appeared in a man made and maintained environment and it is part of that same progression that now obsolete they will slowly disappear. I always smile, inwardly at least that a person will sit and tell me that the broads are not a time capsule but a living evolving landscape, then in the next breath bemoan the loss of this particular land mark or that, often a mill, a boat shed etc. You cannot have it both ways. As with all things the skill and importance is identifying what is genuinely important, what should be saved for the generations to come and what should be allowed to slide into history.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1968-pandemic.html beware the sensationalists who edit Wikipedia!

statistics for H3N2 or "Hong Kong Flu" report less than 1 million deaths, which is not that far from normal worldwide deaths at about 650k worldwide annually from flu or flu related illnesses. By comparison their have been 820k deaths from corona virus so far this year.

We are just back from our annual two week stay in Loddon. Being car based means lots of options are available but for us the must do options every year are Thorpeness Meare, excellent tea room next to the meare which serves the most wicked quiches you ever found, rowing boats on the meare itself, walk along the beach to Aldeborough. At present the seating at the tearoom is outside only so try and chose a nice sunny day. Carlton marshes nature reserve and Oulton Broad. There are a number of beautiful circular walks around the marshes and a path into Oulton Broad. Sadly time has not been kind to Oulton and it is a shadow of what it once was. The nicest tearooms have closed but there are still half decent ones in the park just avoid the cafe in the Boulevard. The Northern Broads, Wroxham, Horning, Ludham, Potter Heigham and Horsey and then usually drive back down the coast through Yarmouth.

Why do we get so attached to our lumps of metal? Today finally saw the demise of the Honda. At 16 years old and 200k plus miles she has finally gone to Honda Heaven. It has been by far the best car I have ever owned. She has never let me down, never required more than routine servicing and consumables, just kept on going and going. Her MOT expired while we were away so I arranged for collection this morning. I have been saying for the last two or three years that if she failed the MOT she was going, but just kept passing, so this year I didn't bother. She still runs well but there are so many little jobs and TLC needed that it's just not worth it. So the family stood on the doorstep and waved her goodbye on the back of the scrap mans wagon. Now the search for our next sacrificial lamb begins. I really don't want to be running the Merc as a daily driver and dirty job wagon.

It's a fair point marshman, and remember in ten days time we send nearly twelve million children back to school, no social distancing, no PPE. At that point social distancing, face masks etc become pretty pointless.

We visited Wroxham a couple of times recently and saw the same thing there, queues for dayboats (in fact queues for everything in Wroxham) and one party off and the next straight on. I can vouch for the cleaning at Pacific in Loddon. Not only is everything being wiped down and sanitised the whole boat is being fogged with an anti bac / anti viral fog machine.

I note next weeks episode is a Mary Berry special, perhaps they are thinking of turning the venerable lady into a National Park?

Just over a year ago I bought a reconditioned Sony Xperia from Giff Gaff to replace one I threw into the River near Horning. Super phone, was listed as "as new" and appeared to have never been out of it's box. I have been very pleased with it but would like, now it's out of warranty, to install a clean fresh Android OS clear of all the mind bogglingly pointless Sony Apps and the Sponsored Bloatware they add, and you can't remove. If I can do my phone then I would like to do Elaine's, which not only has the pointless Sony Apps, the Sony bloatware but as it came originally from Vodafone has all their rubbish on it too. There are 97 apps on her phone that can't be removed! It's getting silly. Is it possible, anyone any experience of doing it?

I don't think anyone is saying that, but if the owner has a permanent mooring on the Broads then he should be fully aware of the vagaries of the Navigation and the unreliability of it's bridges. Whether this should be allowed to happen is another argument, the fact is that it does, frequently. If effected by the "sea" bridges then he will also be trapped by Reedham when it is non operational. Sadly, the opinion often present on fora that we should all travel the broads in boats with a six foot airdraft is obviously becoming entrenched in the various authorities charged with maintaining the opening bridges.

It is indeed, and it is how it once was, but as I have watched the demographic of boat owners change over the last twenty years or more, so I have noticed many of these former courtesies disappear. Allow me to relate two occurrences. The first being the year Brister's closed in Wroxham. We always used Brister for moorings in Wroxham and unaware of their closure looked to do so again, only to find the yard closed, tape across the moorings and no mooring signs on the key heading. This would I think have been 2004. It was a miserable day, lashing down but someone had to go to Roy's to replenish provender or we would be drinking black tea and eating pedigree chum. Sabena was full so we motored up the dyke to what is now Ricko's day boat yard, turned and heading back down the dyke an elderly gent waved to me and asked if I needed to moor. I explained we needed to restock, and he waved me into his boat dyke and unlocked the side gate for me. I went and restocked with the addition of a bottle of Mr Roy's best Malbec which was deposited with our kind hosts and we pushed off back down river to boil the kettle and cook our tinned pie. During that same holiday we were moored at Neatishead enjoying a pleasant evening when, quite late in the evening a connoisseur came in, a big one and moored on the opposite side of the staithe to us, in front of a lovely old woody, beautiful cream painted hull and varnished topsides. We had exchanged courtesies earlier in the afternoon and I apologised for drooling over their bright work, in fact we had quite a chat. The connoisseur sat there, engine running after about an hour of which the occupant of said gorgeous woodie approached the occupants of the stinky connoisseur along the lines of, might you switch your engine off, it's shattering the peace and asphyxiating everyone nearby. Those old connoisseur's weren't half noisy, and smelly. I only caught the latter half of the reply, the "off" bit. Gorgeious woodie did as bid and beat a hasty retreat along lime kiln dyke. I was tempted to follow but the sun was gone from the sky, we had at best half an hour of anything which could be passed off as daylight, and we were a hireboat. I couldn't switch the lights on and make for Stalham or Ludham. After another fifteen minutes mum persuaded me to move, and so we did. Gay's was full, As was Barton Turf. We were turning by Cox's to head back to the broad for a night on the mudweight, something mother hated when master of said gorgeous woodie hailed me from Pennygate and asked if we needed to moor. The obviously reply of yes followed, but we would swing in the open water if need be. We were invited alongside, and spent the night there. We sat on deck sharing our Neuf du Pape and their Grand Crus until well after bedtime. A very convivial evening with new friends. Sadly, I think the days when gestures like this happen are now consigned to history.

they must have some lump of a boat if it can't make it through lothing, 22 feet plus underneath it earlier today

I have just worked out that due to the virus, and other outside influences it is 293 days since I was last in Norfolk. I am 99% certain that that is the longest absence from the county since I was born, 53 years ago.

Norfolk today ........

especially if you forget to let go. I've seen it happen.

but all sailing boats DO have engines, be they petrol powered, diesel powered or quant powered. I have to agree with the Ant comments, I've been there, behind a sailing boat under full sail in virtually zero breeze, of which absolutely none is making it through the trees and travelling at 0.0038kt. You know they are going slowly if I catch them up, as I like to go as slowly as possible on the Ant, engine as quiet as possible, and as long as we have steerage way that's fast enough. I do like to keep up with the speed limits in some places but others are to be enjoyed, the Ant is high on that list of course. I'm happy for it to take all day to get from Stalham to Ranworth. Sadly that usually means I travel along the Ant with something of a queue behind me, and I let them by at every opportunity. Just because I'm happy at 2mph I don't assume any right to impose this on others. If you are becalmed, and not making way other than drifting then please be thoughtful to those behind.