Vaughan

In France it is law that a boat must carry the same number of adult lifejackets as the number of persons for which the boat is registered. I imagine this applies to passenger ships as well??? At least, since 1912 . . . . . A simple precaution, in my mind.

Gosh, we do get rather pious on this forum sometimes, don't we? "Butter wouldn't melt" and all that . . Oh, please, let's not drag that one up out of the archives. We "picked the bones clean" out of that case several years ago.

Sounds good to me . . . .

That will be "Scientific Fuller" - or his successors. Wussername knows who I mean.

But the ebb, we are told, can no longer get rid of it. Which is why we have had all this water lying around on the northern Broads for the last several months.

I didn't notice, to be honest. Like you I refuse to pay for what should be a free website but it does allow you to read an article about once every 3 days, so I make my choices sparingly! I have just been on the phone with a certain Billy Day (of national pike notoriety) and he agrees with me that this is only part of the problem and could well make matters worse.

Exactly! Those meadows that they now want to pump more quickly, are already doing their job, as washlands, to retain excess rainwater. So if they want to pump them into the river before the river can cope with it, where is all that water going to go now? Wroxham, perhaps?

An article on the EDP website this morning announces the building of a large number of new pumping stations around the Thurne area and as far down as St Benets Level. Work will start in spring 2025 and will ensure that the surrounding fields can be more efficiently drained after flooding. This sounds good news, coming so soon after the public meeting in Hickling. A pity the article doesn't mention a rather important problem : if they are going to be able to pump all this rainwater out into the river, what is the river going to do with it???

And you tube 😀 And you can also do more than you think with the wrong advice . . .

It used to be your avatar on the forum, didn't it?

That sounds a bit like a debate going on in the National Trust and several other charities at the moment, about the freedom to roam our "whites only" countryside! I suppose I just lament that skills that we learned at school just don't seem to be taught any more, because the kids can just download something instead. There is great pleasure in being able to read the detail of a map, almost like being able to read a book. When I was truck driving it was long before GPS and I drove all over France relying solely on Michelin maps, in two different scales. They even tell a truck driver the height under road bridges. I will always choose a good map and have never had a GPS in a car. But then I am an old git nowadays . . .

I have seen a few of those, round Womack Island . . . .

This is the map that was issued free by Richardsons each time I hired a boat from them a few years ago. Exactly the same map was available in Lathams and other Broads shops and I assume it still is. I was taught how to read an Ordnance Survey map when I was at prep school and even the British Army couldn't later teach me to read one any better. I cannot see how you would need any more information than this map, to cruise the Broads and know exactly where you were : With this on my boat I have no need whatever of any APP - even if if I could find a phone signal to download the thing.

There is a piece just appeared on broads national pike, which members might enjoy! Sorry I can't link it.

When I tried to log on this morning around 0715 (UK) I was met with a window in red letters inviting me to prove I am not a robot. Suffice to say I didn't open it. Now, I am able to log on normally again. Is this some sort of scam, that the team should be aware of?

Peter Sellers recorded this on a 78 record in 1958. It could be just as true if he had done it today.

They obviously didn't get a proper "trial run" from the builders. You are supposed to give the stern gland grease cap a half turn every morning.

Thank you to all those who have reported back with info on the meeting. I don't suppose we should have realistically expected that something might actually happen? Leaving aside party politics, I must say that Duncan Baker has proved himself to be an excellent "constituency" MP. He makes himself available to assist where he can and I have often seen him on TV, standing up in The House to raise matters of importance to North Norfolk, so thanks are due to him for this effort. It appears to me this time though, that he may be fighting a bit of an uphill battle. As an old friend of mine, who was base manager for our operation in New York State used to say : It's impossible to soar like an eagle - when you are surrounded by turkeys!

Thank you for that, most interesting. I noticed, when the train drew into Wroxham and Salhouse, a lot of dis-used platform, which used to accommodate the holiday special weekend trains in summer, which could be up to 10 or 11 coaches long.

If you are only looking back 20 years this may explain the difference in our opinions. When I grew up on the Broads right up to the mid 70's, the only places where you paid to moor were the yacht stations in Norwich and Oulton Broad. You also paid to mud weight overnight on Wroxham Broad but that has always been private water. Anywhere else, if there was no sign saying "private" then you stuck your rhond hooks in the bank. That is what they were provided for. St Benets Abbey was like this and it was a much larger length of mooring than nowadays. Members whose memory is not the same as mine, are free to say so. This idea of charging to moor was started by a few large pubs in about 1977 - and sure enough, Horning Ferry was the first to make a little bit on the side, by charging their own customers to moor on their premises. This was very heavily resisted by the two main hire agencies but, like all contagious diseases, it rapidly caught hold and got out of control. At the same time the farming landowners had successfully lobbied parliament to have their banks built up against flooding and protected by steel piling with wooden capping. Paid for by government grant as has become customary in farming. These new banks looked rather like a nice mooring and so "Oh, look, why not charge the boats to moor up there?" I submit that the boating public have been fleeced ever since by this creeping malaise and now even the BA have got in on "a nice little earner". Hardly concommittent with the idea of a "National Park" I would think. So if you are really content with the thought that wherever you go in future on the Broads rivers that you have paid your toll to cruise, you then have to fork out ten Quid wherever you want to stop, I wish you well of it. I have my memories of much more enjoyable cruising.

Sure, they do now. As soon as one farmer caught on, everyone has jumped on the bandwagon. Anyway, I have already made my decision. This sort of thing just confirms it.

Well, here's me getting grumpy again but I see this as yet another nail in the coffin. Mouldy is quite right. The BA have already quoted the charge for moorings on Ranworth island as their excuse for charging at the Maltsters. This new charge, on what used to be one of their free moorings, will give them the perfect excuse to charge at other places - Rockland short dyke might be next. In fact, it is not only the BA's fault : the real disease, in my view, is that anyone who owns a bit of land with a river bank now expects to sit back and make a living out of a captive audience. And don't say that there is no-one to take the money at Rockland - the local ranger can do that as he passes and at the same time ask everyone whether they have had a trial run or not.

Sorry to be late getting around to it but it is indeed, worth a read. at least that is what the quote from the article above seems to indicate to me. I certainly would have quoted this paragraph if Grendel hadn't already! This is surely a clear case for the dredging of the lower reaches to improve the volume and flow out to sea. I very much agree with the subjects that they have covered, except in one area, where there is a big difference between what I call a "washland" and what they are now calling "farmland". One is a traditional Broads grazing meadow which is deliberately flooded as a water retention basin during high tides or excessive rainfall : The other is a field that has had the water table deliberately lowered by "deep dyke" pumping, and must now be protected from flooding. It is becoming obvious that you can't have both. Especially as the constant pumping of these arable fields goes into the rivers and must also find its way out to sea. It is all re-claimed land and I fear that farmers have "stolen" a lot of it for their own profit, which they now complain has to be "protected". I had never thought before that the fall in the land between the upper Thurne and Yarmouth is only one metre but I suppose it must be, when you think of it.

I wonder where the public staithe comes in to all this?

But still most appropriate when considering the problems of tidal flow on the Bure. Another example is Penton Hook Marina, on the Thames near Staines. The whole mooring complex is situated in an ancient meander of the river, within its flood plain.