YnysMon

Thanks for the tale Sue. I’m glad you discovered the Merlin App, I think it’s great. Where did you order the curry from when at Ranworth?

But I want to get somewhere where I can watch. I guess mooring spots like Acle, Potter and Ludham will be popular!

Fully agree with Mark’s post. My two struggled in primary school, and although they did get through to taking mostly reasonable GCSE grades, I think they would have done a lot better with more support early on. My younger son did get some classroom support, but my eldest didn’t, even though his teachers felt he needed it. The teachers were concerned that, even though he could demonstrate orally that he was absorbing information well and had an excellent reading speed for his age, he was very reluctant to write, so couldn’t demonstrate his learning ability. There was one year when I went into school as an unofficial classroom assistant for him in the mornings. Luckily, I was then working part time and my manager agreed that I could start work at midday and work through until seven in the evening, instead of doing 9 to 3.

I hope someone finds him. He lookes like a cutie.

I wonder if the Recruiting Sergeant has the same policy…aren’t they owned by the same people?

I vividly remember our first afternoon ever on the Broads. We had picked up a Wood class sailey from Hunters Yard, got under THE bridge (beginners luck as we hadn’t checked the tides) and were mostly fine tacking up the stretch above Potter until we were approaching Martham. There seemed to be an awful lot of Martham Boats saileys all moored stern on and all with horrible bowsprits. That took the wind out of our proverbial sails! We got past somehow, but not without some tricky fending off. Those were the days when none of the Hunters boats had torqeedo electric propulsion.

The numbers of available moorings quoted on the BA website are all inflated, unless you assume they will all be taken up by boats not much longer than day boats. In practice, I think you have to halve the number of boats to get to a figure that can reasonably accommodated. I recall the first time we went past Bramerton on Moonlight Shadow. Being an August bank holiday Saturday it was rammed, but half was taken up by what looked like two Dutch barges. If they hadn’t been double moored they’d probably have hogged the whole stretch.

My worry is that some impressionable people think this is how normal people live…hence the deterioration in behaviour generally.

It’s fixed in my head as the Easter Island mooring too. Shame the carved wooden Easter Island heads have disappeared.

Welcome to the forum. We have a couple of dogs who love the Broads too…a collie we’ve had since a puppy and a rescue dog that we found on the river bank just outside Norwich about 18 months ago. Amazingly, our rescue dog Pozzick is a fairly chilled out dude, whereas our collie Seren is completely nutty. Mooring up is always the most challenging bit. Practice makes perfect…at least that’s what I keep telling myself.

The woodchip at Irstead seems to be topped up fairly regularly. The last couple of times we’ve stopped there (this year and a couple of years ago) it looked new anyway.

Hi Will, welcome to the forum. It’s only 10 years (almost) since we discovered the Broads, and we now have a share in a syndicate boat (a very cost effective way of maximising Broads time without committing to buying a boat). I would recommend you absorb information available online. Some boatyards, such as Richardson’s have introductory videos on YouTube, as does the Broads Authority. I have found this website a mine of information: https://www.mynorfolkbroadsboating.co.uk

No water point at Irstead unfortunately. Nearest one is Gaye’s Staithe. Irstead does have a bottle bank and a general waste skip thingy though.

I would avoid Hoveton Little Broad too due to the weed. It will probably be okay early in the season, but last year the warm summer encouraging weed growth meant that the sailing club stopped using it.

Is it just me being inattentive, or has the final ‘Easter island’ carving disappeared from that lovely wild mooring? There used to be a couple, there was only one there the last 18 months or so.

Glad you are okay.

There’s plenty of parking for customers outside The White Swan and its adjoining fishmonger shop. When we travel into Gt Yarmouth from Horning, our route takes us past the yacht station and The White Swan. If you are approaching from Acle direction it’s just off the roundabout after you cross the river Bure.

I think the cheese shop is fairly new. I don’t remember seeing it last time I walked into Acle to visit the co-op.

Thanks…you certainly do learn something new everyday. Harry and I were impressed at how much history was lurking in the nooks and crannies of Great Yarmouth, if you look carefully.

Friday 26th April The usual boring final cleaning morning, following an early morning visit to Boulter’s. It’s a lot easier and quicker to clean the boat without having had the dogs on board though! We got away around mid-day and went to The White Horse, Neatishead for lunch. We both just had burgers, but they were very enjoyable, and I took the opportunity to buy a loyalty card for £10, which gives 5% off food and drink. I’m not sure why it’s taken me so long to buy one, as it’s also valid in the Thurne Lion. We had a good journey home, with reasonable traffic. I was glad I wasn’t going the other way though, as there appeared to be several hold-ups.

Thursday 25th April The plan for today had been to moor at Potter Heigham and do the circular walk that joins the section of the Weaver’s Way that skirts Hickling Broad and Heigham Sound. However, given the path at Acle had been flooded yesterday, we thought…perhaps not. Instead, we decided to go to Great Yarmouth. It’s not somewhere we would want to visit when we have the dogs with us, so today seemed a good opportunity. First, we enjoyed the final cruise for this trip up to Horning. Shortly after Thurne Mouth, we noticed that Springer’s Retreat was in front of the boat immediately in front of us, and as that boat turned up the Ant, we ended up following Kate until we turned off into HPC. Entering the HPC basin... It's lovely that our mooring is alongside most of the other syndicate boats. We managed to find a car park in Yarmouth not far from the Market Square. They seem to have built a new market building recently, and there were some interesting food stalls there. Sadly though, Yarmouth town centre seems mostly run down and a bit tatty. There is Victorian arcade that at one time must have been quite posh, but is currently looking very sad, with most of the units being empty. I’m sure it could be revived if someone had some vision. Renting out some of the units as what looks like very bare office space isn’t going to help. There are also shops along some of the 'rows' that lead off the market square. We walked from the market toward the yacht station, noticing the interesting names of some of the ‘rows’ on the way. This one sounds a bit gruesome... And what the on earth is a 'peruke'? Lunch was had at The White Swan, which is very close to the yacht station and the old town walls. There’s a fishmonger’s there (with a wonderful selection of fish and fish products, including baguettes and salads to take away) and a fish restaurant. Harry and I both chose a dish from the specials board: Halibut steaks with pea risotto, pickled samphire and mussels, and a lovely creamy sauce. Absolutely delish. I overheard one couple nearby telling other diners that friends had recommended they try the seafood platter, so if we visit again we might try that. The fishmongers... After lunch we walked down to the historic South Quay, passing Vauxhall Bridge on the way. Near Vauxhall Bridge there's a memorial stone to the tragedy that occurred when a suspension bridge collapsed when a crowd had gathered on it to watch a clown's stunt. Sadly the majority of the victims were children. There was almost 8' under the bridge. Harry didn't have that much clearance walking under it. The flow under Haven Bridge looked pretty ferocious. There are a number of museums in the vicinity of the South Quay, but for today we just visited the National Trust Elizabethan House. I’d like to visit some of the other museums some time. There is also an old fishing vessel, the Lydia Eva, that is free to visit. When we were passing it was hosting a large party of small children and their carers, so closed to other visitors. By the way – a tip. If you are caught short and want to find the nearest loo whilst visiting the South Quay, the Public Library near the Elizabethan House is handy. The Elizabethan House was interesting. Originally there had been at least three buildings separated by 'rows' - the narrow passageways that led between the river to the sea. At that time sea-going ships didn't come up river, they were unloaded off the beach area, and the rows facilitated movement between the river vessels and the sea. This passageway in the house had originally been a 'row'. Different rooms in the house are furnished to reflect different eras in the house's history. Apparently, there's a theory that the plan to execute King Charles 1 might have been hatched in this very room. After that, we went back to the market area and walked as far as the Britannia Pier along the pedestrianised Regent Road. Pretty depressing, as most of the shops were shut, and the ones that we open seemed to be mostly very cheap tat. Maybe the place will have more life about it in the summer. I’m not very keen on the typical seaside resorts at the best of times. Back on the boat we had a very peaceful evening. I enjoy our evenings moored up in the boatyard. It somehow feels like ‘home’.

Wednesday 24th April Kate (forum member kpnut) and I had hatched a plan to meet up at around 10am this morning at Acle. I’d figured that it had taken me a couple of hours to cruise from Acle to Irstead yesterday, so I duly started out at 8am this morning. Harry was still in bed, so I managed to set off without his assistance again. It was a pleasant morning, with just a few spots of rain, which wasn’t an issue as we had just over 8’ clearance under Ludham Bridge, so we got through with the canopy up again. As we emerged onto the more 'exposed' parts of the river, the wind seemed to be bit stronger than the ‘moderate breeze’ that the BBC had forecast and when we got to Acle it was blowing strongly off the BA moorings. I don’t think we would have managed to moor up without Kate’s assistance. It didn’t help that a squall with rain and even stronger wind struck just as we were mooring up, so both Kate and Harry got wet. This duck seemed quite happy sitting near MS' bow. Kate went back over the bridge to her boat and then she and her husband Tony joined us in the Dunes River Café for breakfast. I enjoyed a child’s breakfast, which was plenty enough for me: sausage (or you can opt for bacon), egg, beans and tomato and toast. I was pleased that they were sensible enough not to put butter on my toast, as I’d asked for dairy free milk with my tea, even though I’d forgotten to mention that I didn’t want butter. That’s good service. After our breakfast, Kate and Tony joined us on MS for a while for a natter, before they set off for Womack. Harry and I walked into Acle. We had planned to follow the Weaver’s Way as far as Acle Dyke, but the stretch of path that leads from the Acle Bridge Inn moorings was flooded, so we ended up just walking to and from the village along the path that follows the line of the road. It’s a fairly pleasant walk though as it’s separated from the road by a hedgerow. We were a bit concerned about these swan eggs on the way into Acle, but on our way back, the (mummy?) swan was back. We also spotted a moorhen. We found the old pillbox in Acle that Kate mentioned in a recent post, which seems very incongruous stuck in the middle of a new housing development, and on our way back through the village we noticed that there appears to be a semi-pillbox built into the side of Manor House, an old house that overlooks the green in the centre of the village. We also discovered a wonderful deli called Lemon Tree Fine Foods, which is on the corner opposite the church (and near the Co-op) and specialises in cheese. Well worth a visit if you are a cheese lover. They had several local cheeses, but also some more unusual British and continental cheeses, including the Norwegian gjetost cheese (it’s brown and fairly sweet), which I haven’t had since visiting Norway with my Mum. Although I try to avoid dairy in the tree pollen hay fever season (i.e. now!) I find that goats milk/cheese doesn’t trigger symptoms as badly as cows milk. After visiting the cheese shop we picked up a few bits and pieces in Co-op before returning to the boat. Luckily, although we had a few spits and spots of rain during the walk, we managed to get back to the boat without getting wet. Apart from the squall that we’d had when approaching Acle, today’s weather wasn’t too bad with lots of sunny spells. The wind died down in the evening, so we had a peaceful night without bow slap. This evening I tried out something a bit different (for us anyway). As (vegetarian) Graham isn’t with us, we had duck breasts with a salad of spinach, chopped orange segments, (cold) new potatoes and sliced red chilli with an orange juice and oil dressing pepped up with a splash of soy sauce. Very easy to prepare and - YUM! Graham has refined his solution for keeping the saloon warm. This time we have a blanket that has a channel sewn in for an extendable curtain rod. This gets hung in the doorway between the saloon and galley. Harry is spending some of his time on board learning Japanese.

Tuesday 23rd April I woke before dawn this morning. Back to my old bad habit of waking early the first few nights on board. I was very cosy in bed until the electric credit ran out, after which I got up and put the Webasto on, so was still cosy. Around 8am I woke Harry and made him some coffee. Shortly after that I spotted that the river was dead slack, so I took the opportunity to set off without Harry having to help me with untying the lines. The plan today was to go up the Ant. Almost as soon as we started off it started drizzling. Very light drizzle, but you know how that can fog up the windscreen even more than proper rain. I was wishing that I’d put some Rain-X on the windscreen yesterday. Fortunately, the drizzle eased off as we neared Ludham Bridge, so I was able to pop my head out of the helm hatch and, as the sills were visible under the bridge, we didn’t need to take our canopy down. I had been given a heads up by a lady in a passing private boat that there was 8’ under the bridge. The drizzle mostly kept off for the journey up the Ant, so I was able to keep the hatch open and enjoy the bird song. Thanks to the Merlin App, I’m starting to recognise some bird song, especially birds that have distinct calls such as chiff-chaff and cetty’s warblers. I do love a journey up the river Ant, even on a dull day. Our luck struck again. There was no one at Irstead Staithe! We hastily moored up and found 87p credit on the post. Win-win! Some swans were quick to beg for food. We decided to have today’s main meal at lunch time. We had chosen a couple of rump steaks when at Roy’s. To be honest, they were a bit of a disappointment, being rather tough. Maybe we should have gone to Ludham butchers (I was trying to save cruising time yesterday by only going to Roy’s). On the other hand, the beer battered oven chips that we also bought at Roy’s were great. We discovered them on our last trip, and I’ve not found them on sale anywhere else so far. far. After lunch we went for a walk to Alderfen Broad. As we were walking along Shoals Road (that leads from the staithe) we spotted a deer running across the adjacent field, that in turn startled a large hare. We love spotting the wildlife and the flora. Last time we were on the Broads the hedgerows were full of daffodils. This time, they were generously sprinkled with bluebells and other wild flowers are starting to come out too. At the end of Shoals Road we found the (late) Queen’s tree. We got to the Broad along Water Lane, then some footpaths that took us to the eastern entry to the nature reserve. Having visited the viewing platform... I then commented to Harry that the path that leads to the southern entrance to the reserve looked a lot less muddy that it had last time I visited. I was slightly regretting this observation a little later when one foot sank almost to the top of my boot. It was very muddy, and it started to rain, so our trousers were fairly wet by the time we got back to the boat. We were both wearing trousers that dry quickly though, and as the sun came out when we got back (sods law), they dried nicely our very warm saloon. It was a very peaceful evening, apart from when the boat moored on the nearby parish staithe ran their engine. They did this after the normal 8pm time, and also at 7am the following morning. Grrr.

THE TALE OF TRIP 19 Monday 22nd April Just a short five-day trip this time, but a bonus one, as no one else in the Syndicate had been able to take advantage of a spare week. We have a new syndicate member who was unable to use their first week due to having already booked up holiday leave and originally we had thought that this spare week would come in handy to complete some work on MS (replacing the repaired push-pit rail and replacing a panel in the aft heads). However, last week’s owners had left early and Horning Pleasurecraft staff had been their usual efficient selves and completed the planned work last week. This meant that my son Harry and I have been able to fortuitously catch a few extra days on board. We couldn’t take the whole week as I was committed to playing the organ in two churches Sunday morning and Harry was playing in a Woburn Sands Band concert late Sunday afternoon (which was a really excellent concert). Unfortunately, my husband Graham and younger son Alec couldn’t join us as they had commitments this week, and we decided that our two dogs would also stay home to keep them company. Graham had done most of the food shopping for me yesterday (bless him, he does spoil me) and so by leaving MK fairly early we managed to get to Horning in time to depart from the Marina before mid-day, despite a stop-off in Roy’s to get a few choice morsels (mainly locally produced sausage, bacon and dressed crabs). It’s amazing how quickly you can get everything on board and get away when you don’t have to prepare the boat for the dogs (i.e. cover every saloon surface). Setting off and mooring up is a lot more peaceful without the dogs too. Seren whines like anything, making quite a racket, and Pozzie has decided recently that he sometimes needs to join in. So, our departure from HPC was a lot calmer than it normally is. Apart from knowing that we would stay up north, we hadn’t decided where to go today. We did a bit of dithering whether to go up the Ant, but in the end decided to go down the Bure as far as Stokesby, moor up for a visit to the shop, then return to Acle. Last week I thought we could do some mud weighting, as we don’t have the dogs with us, but the temperatures this week seem to have dipped again, so we were wanting to be hooked up to electric ideally. It's nice to be able to appreciate the upholstery for once! When we got to Stokesby the BA moorings were taken (as anticipated). However, no sooner had we moored on the farm moorings and sorted out our ropes properly (which took longer than normal as the ropes expert – Graham - isn’t with us), we spotted that a space had become free on the BA moorings. We started off again, post haste, and as we approached the BA moorings the other boat there started off too. So we have ended up with the mooring to ourselves for much of the day. It seems that getting to Stokesby around 2pm, or shortly after, is a good ploy, as people who have had lunch at the pub are ready to leave (I’ve previously noticed a similar turn-over at Potter Heigham early afternoon). By this time we were peckish ourselves, so we made our way to the pub and had a couple of starters with a shared portion of chips. Harry had whitebait and I had the salt and pepper squid. As we had only been peckish, not really hungry, we didn’t even finish the chips. We also visited the shop and got some rocky road and some chocolates. There is what seems like a fairly tame swan and there are also some cheeky geese in Stokesby. Back on the boat we put a couple of pounds credit on the electric post and I did some unpacking. Harry caught up with some sleep. Late afternoon we went for a walk along the river bank as far as Old Hall Drainage Mill. It wasn’t that long a walk, but enjoyable. There’s one section where there’s a little belt of blackthorn that forms a small tunnel over the path. It felt very odd going for a walk without the dogs though. We only wanted a light supper this evening, so we had the dressed crab from Roy’s with some fresh crusty bread and a small side salad. There wasn’t anything on telly that we wanted to watch either and we felt too tired to start watching a DVD, so it was a fairly early night. Doh! Once I was nicely ensconced in bed, I realised we hadn’t checked how much credit was left on the electric post. I semi-dressed again, went out and was surprised how much we’d used since mid-afternoon, so put another £2 on the post. This lasted until just before 7am the following morning. I guess it’s not surprising that the credit isn’t lasting so long, given the way the utilities have increased in price. On this trip, we generally used just over £3 overnight, plus another £1 heating the boat with a dimplex from late afternoon. We had a dimplex on in each of our cabins (mine was on a very low setting) and each had an underblanket.

I’ve forgotten the boat keys before now, luckily that was when the syndicate was still were managed by a company that had a local agent who lent us his keys. Another MS syndicate owner recently owned up to forgetting the keys, fortunately they don’t have such a long journey from home to MS. In response, other members offered up the info that they actually store the boat keys in their car so that they can’t inadvertently forget them…that sounds like a very good idea!