Vaughan

This was the yard, photo taken at the start of our first season. We lived in the bungalow on the front, which had a small riverside shop off the side. There was a dyke leading back to a slipway, car park and a shed big enough for 2 boats. The one that Andy hired is at the left hand end and is the same as the one on the right. These were both ex Brooms Wavechiefs and are the same as the infamous Pelican but I don't think the Pelican was either of these two. At least I hope not! The sea-going cruiser in the centre was built privately by Landamores on the lines of a Vestella but she was a private customer - not one of the hire fleet! I suppose my favourite boat was this one. Ex Hamptons Classic Safari and was in private hands when I bought her. Fitted with navigation lights but I hid the switch up under the dashboard. Its location was shown to selected regular customers only! A lot of maintenance on the varnish, but an excellent hire boat. I'm sorry I don't have many photos. I must have been too busy, at that time!

Thank you very much for those. I well remember John and Jean Lacey but I am afraid the bay window that I remember must have been a different pub. Perhaps it was the Thorpe Gardens (Rushcutters), which certainly used to have one.

Thanks folks. It's a silly thing really - I am drawing out a pub to make for my railway layout. The building will be based on the Kings Head at Hethersett (which is easily Googled) but I thought I would make it with a bay window and I remember that the Black Horse used to have one, where I often sat having a drink on my way home from work, with Perci Percival and Jack Bidewell, the river inspector. So a photo would help me to get it right on the model.

I am looking for a photo of the old Black Horse pub on the Horning Road at Hoveton. I have been Googling away merrily but keep getting directed to Black Horse Broad, but not the Black Horse pub. Can anyone help with an old photo?

Not to forget the very large number of young people, on their annual holiday from their jobs in Midlands factories, who would hire an 8 - berth boat from Potter, Wroxham or Stalham ; go straight down to GYYS that night and spend the rest of the week there, as the cost of the boat was a lot less than their accommodation in a hotel or boarding house on the seafront. And God bless 'em for it! I wonder how many members of this forum can put their hands up and say that was how they were introduced to the Broads, by their parents? We should not forget our roots!

So was the TV series "Warship" which was being filmed in Portland at that time!

Oh? Which is the other one, in your view? I see nothing at all wrong with debating this, on a forum, as views from all sides can be discussed democratically. It might result in both sides of the argument understanding each other better. Is that what a forum is for? It certainly was for the Romans . . .

I must say, this insistence on exclusivity is wishful thinking in this age of social media and it could easily appear cliquey, as well as snobbish. I always remember, in the days when TV had only 3 main channels and I spent a couple of weeks in the Naval base at Portland on a training course as a flight deck officer. The base covered a great deal of naval training then, so the officers' mess was a big place. There were two television rooms : the TV on the ground floor was tuned permanently to BBC1 and the one on the first floor was tuned to BBC2. ITV was simply not acknowledged, in a Naval wardroom!

I agree with both Mark and MM on this, where boatyard and mooring businesses are concerned. I think it is accepted, world-wide, that marina moorings are charged by the foot length. What irks me, is when you get a non - boatyard business that decides to charge people for mooring on land which abuts the river bank. I refer of course to certain farmers, who did very nicely thank you out of all the flood protection provided for them by the EA and others and then thought that the "camp shedding" put there to protect their fields looked like a nice mooring so they thought what a good idea to charge for it, where it had otherwise been an accepted wild mooring for decades. I am also, and always will be, totally against pubs charging for moorings and thus biting the hand that feeds them.

Anchor's Aweigh. Excuse the errant apostrophe! I also remember that the tow boats from Burgh Castle Yacht Station and Pearsons at Reedham used to do a roaring trade there on a Sunday morning!

Reading back over this discussion, I think it was the hire boat agencies, not the river authority, who advised against mooring there, owing to quite a lot of damage being done. In those days there were many more yards on the south rivers, especially in Brundall and so there would be a big flock of boats crossing Breydon on the tide. The agencies preferred them to wait for the night in Reedham or St Olaves rather than Berney. There was also the problem of getting to them if they broke down, on what was often their first night out. If anyone has an old copy of the Blakes skipper's handbook, called "Anchors Aweigh", I am pretty sure it will be mentioned in there.

What my father would have called a nasty smell in the woodshed. I have often wondered what that "smell" was supposed to be, in his mind. Was it smoke; perhaps an over - hung pheasant; or maybe the remains of a dead gardener?

Exactly!

Berney, Beauchamp and Stracey Arms are all named after the owners of the estates on which they were built. To give an idea of the timescale, the original Norfolk Railway from Norwich to Yarmouth was built in 1844. The reason that Berney Arms Halt still operates today is because its existence was written into the deeds when the Berney estate allowed the railway to cross its land. The halt, the pub and Berney mill itself, were built to serve a huge cement factory, with buildings on both sides of Breydon at its junction with the Yare and Waveney and with wherry loading jetties extending for several hundred yards out onto Breydon itself. Some of the supporting posts can still be seen at low tide. If that lot didn't frighten the birds, I can't see that a bistro would. In fact the biggest threat to birds in those days was wildfowlers from Cobham, not the existence of one riverside pub. I also wonder how all that lot got on without "immediate access for emergency vehicles". There is a certain smell of politics about this. Or maybe the BA planning department are going to play their old Jenners Basin trick and announce that permission has been "abandoned"?

Different pub - same owner. A report on the EDP website this morning says that an application to re-open the Berney Arms as a cafe and bistro has received strong objections from the BA, because of the tidal current and because its "remoteness would limit immediate access for emergency vehicles" and from the RSPB, because it would frighten their birds on Breydon. When was that pub built? Must be 100 years ago, surely?

That sounds like the one!

I was sent to a reputable prep school. So in my case, it was Benson and Hedges.

There was a bittern booming very close by in the reeds that night on Rockland Broad, with a chorus of 3 cuckoos once the dawn came up.

Here is stern on mooring at Surlingham when we were alone on the mooring. The trick is to drop the mud weight on the full length of line, before you finish backing in, so the weight is out well in front of you and it holds you off the bank. There doesn't seem very much slack in the stern lines but it was enough, and we didn't need to adjust for the rise and fall of tide. Members will be pleased to note the NBN pennant on a hire boat!

What a thoroughly dismal prospect. There would be no fun in that for me and there is no way on Earth (wait for the pun) that you would find Susie and I sitting in one of those utterly ridiculous garden pod greenhouse things, looking as though we are waiting to be "beamed up"!

This was the point at which I stopped posting yesterday, since comments like this are simply bordering on the libellous and I see no reason for it in these circumstances. I think the BA's approach to the handling of this crisis is correct and commendable. I see no reason at all, at this time, to try to seek an ulterior motive. I am sorry to have to say that it does no credit to the forum nor to the poster and I am sure, in the cold light of this morning, that he would agree with me.

the private sector has every right to question the largess that has been presented to the hire industry. Both these comments imply that payment is being made from one to support the other, which is not the case. The hire fleets have not received largesse, from the BA or the private owners. All that the BA have done is to alter the dates on which stage payments are made, to allow for better cash flow towards the latter half of the season. Let's look at the small print of that e-mail again : Once a hire boat is put into commission for hire, rather than mothballed, it will pay the full toll for the year, which has always been the case and could I please mention, I have been saying that all through the last 3 months! There will be a review in September to try and see whether yards will have enough income to survive the winter and that is when the BA may well lobby for them to have government assistance. For the moment they are not being paid anything by anyone, except by whatever customers they can manage to retrieve from this crisis. I would guess that any boats that remain mothballed will be put up for sale (if they are not already) and then we shall start to see the real effects of the recession.

During our natural pre-occupation with the virus there are still other matters, (such as Brexit ) waiting "in the wings". As one of the "usual suspects" where national park status is concerned, I take especial note, and encouragement, from what Dr Packman states in that opening paragraph. This is what my father's generation had been saying about the Broads ever since the War and I have always believed it myself. It makes the Broads unique and it also makes navigation indivisible from any other NP priorities. I am very glad to see him state this and I will not forget, in future, that he did so!

If you want peace, prepare for war. It is attributed to Plato as well as assorted Roman Generals and was the accepted motto of those of us who served in the Forces during the Cold War. Still appropriate in this case, I thought.

"Si vis pacem, para bellum".