YnysMon

Brooms has a history of using the name 'The White Heron'. I came across this... https://www.nationalhistoricships.org.uk/register/2934/white-heron

We’ve walked to Ludham village and back from How Hill too…several years ago when we were on a couple of Hunter’s Yard boats. We moored up at How Hill following a rather tricky sail down the Ant. It’s indelibly marked in my memory as Graham and I got stuck in a tree just north of How Hill. The wind the following morning wasn’t in the direction that we’d hoped to help us sail on, so we went on a lovely walk instead. Tale here: Actually, I think that was one of the first tales I posted, and there aren’t many photos as I hadn’t yet worked that out! On the other hand, I’ve just remembered that I added a link in at the end of that post to a rather atmospheric YouTube video of the Broads that fleetingly captured our two boys doing a double quant through Meadow Dyke against the wind.

That was beautiful Malcolm. How about a 360 with MS happening to pass through? Or do you have to be on the bank to capture that?

Sorry, I don’t tend to post that many photos from my smart phone as I have a very cheap package with limited data. I save them up until I get home, load everything from different cameras/phones onto my laptop and then open them up from my browser. For our last trip I had loads of photos to select from as I got my sun to share his with me.

Hmm. I’ve recently switched from using soya milk to oat milk…because I think using a milk that relies on soya beans generally grown in the America’s isn’t that sustainable compared to using oats that can be grown here. However, I’ve noticed that doing a bechamel sauce using oat milk is a bit tricky. It seems to turn out more runny than using soya milk. I will add more flour next time. Also, I’ve found that using a tablespoon of nutritious yeast or a teaspoon of marmite in the ‘cheese’ sauce is better than using ‘pretend cheese’. I do use the ‘cheese’ on the top though.

P.s. I save my resized photos to a temporary folder for that particular day, so when I want to upload the photos I can just go to that folder and do a select all option.

If I recall correctly, what I do is right click on the file of the photo, select edit from the menu then on the menu bar at the top select resize. I generally resize to 20%. Let me know if that works.

Ooh! Damson gin sounds very inviting! I’ve read about the Fishley Church and hope to visit. We’ve only done walk from Acle to Upton along the Bure bank, must try other routes sometime. I’m glad we have bought into syndicate, as we wanted more time on the rivers than we could afford when hiring. However, we don’t think we would be able to afford to maintain our own boat. Though I do envy the amount of time you have on the rivers.

Shingles on top of that lot! Take care of yourself and come back fighting! Sorry , meant take care of yourself and come back cruising! (And enjoying it…in health).

More Bramble photos please! We have to keep up with her lovely, delightful development.

There's a tea room called Prima Rosa that I've been wanting to visit for some time. They also sell gifts and a small range of food essentials. We must stop at Salhouse sometime!

That’s excellent news. Did you walk to the pub?

We’ll that’s confusing. I wonder if they’ve just been slow updating their website or whether they are appealing against the decision. They do seem to be trying to make the boatyard a venue for locals to visit with a number of events planned over the summer, including open air cinema. I assumed it was open air anyway…suppose it might be in a shed.

I suppose that would make sense if they want hirers to visit the refurbished and renamed pub. When we left Brooms last month, Lightening (Thunder's sister boat) was still moored at Brooms. I don't think there's been any mention of them leaving yet...well I haven't heard anything anyway. I've no idea whether Brooms completely gave up on the idea of the houseboats or not. Someone here said they'd been turned down for planning permission, although one houseboat has appeared there. Didn't see anyone use it during our weeks on MS though.

Been there lots of times - spectacular!

I'm not surprised. Brooms fuel prices are extortionate. One of the reasons why we're glad we've moved north.

This did make me chuckle. I started organ lessons when I was 16 and started playing in the Parish church of St Cybi, Holyhead about the same time. (I was hopeless to start with, but they were desperate as, at that time not only were they short of organists, but all the services in that church were conducted in Welsh, which narrowed down the selection somewhat.) I also played at weddings, but was pretty much terrified that I would mess up. To make things worse, for one of the first weddings that I played at, the bride asked for (Elvis') 'When I fall in love' to be played for her entrance. Not a good choice for walking up the aisle, and not really suitable for the organ! I really struggled with it anyway. Luckily for me, by the time Graham and I got married there was a very, very good organist playing at the largest English speaking church in Holyhead, so good that I was able to ask him to play Widor's Toccata for our exit (for those not in the know, it's very demanding to play). Mind you, Graham did comment on our way out that it reminded him of a fairground Wurlitzer. I don't play for weddings nowadays. They are either on a weekday, when I'm working anyway, or Saturdays, and that just takes too much time out of my weekend.

Loved the detail about the organ in Belaugh church. I visited the church not long after completing an art history course with the OU, so I was principally interested in the rood screen. My son Harry came along with me for a day trip by car visiting various Norfolk Churches that have rood screens. It’s quite a while ago now, but I think we visited Worstead, Catfield, Tunstead and Barton Turf churches, as well as Belaugh. Wish I’d paid more attention to the organ. I play the organ on Sundays at our local church (not that well!), so Belaugh is now on our list for a return visit. By the way, Barton Turf has the most amazing rood screen. We’ll worth the walk from Neatishead. I can never decide which is best, Ranworth or Barton Turf.

More lovely walks and recipes too. Bliss! We have done part of the walk along the upper Bure towards Aylsham but didn’t get that far. Although someone had cut back the growth of nettles, brambles etc it was still fairly overgrown. I think we did it in Autumn though. That breakfast yogurt with paprika in it sounds intriguing. Was the river very cold for swimming?

Thanks, I love the descriptions of walks. We've never moored near Neaves Mill as I didn't think you could go anywhere from that bank. We'll certainly try it out some time. I agree with Jean, I think your blogs are brilliant.

Sounds like you had a wonderful day. We must search out that walk you did from Coltishall Locks. We’ve always found the NBD staff and the pilot very helpful, having hired from them a couple of times. Great customer service. It was also nice to have a view of your boat. That’s such a practical design for the Broads…no worries for you if it’s hissing down when you want to get back under the bridge. (Though we do love Moonlight Shadow.) We’ll try to keep an eye out and wave when we are back on the Broads. Hope to meet up for another chat too. Thanks for posting.

Your 90 year old Mum must be pretty agile for her age. Good for her, though in your shoes I’d have given her a rollicking too!

Kingfishers are difficult to capture. Just when you think you’ve focused tge camera off they go! Oh no! That’s awful! Hope things get sorted for you soon! We’ve only moved house a couple of times but I found it really stressful, especially when we bought our first house, having first rented. We were so looking forward to moving into our first (owned) home that we agreed to a 23rd December move. That went a bit pear shaped. We didn’t get the keys until late afternoon so spent the evening/ night moving our stuff in a hired van. Foolishly we thought as we’d only been married about 18 months we hadn’t accumulated much stuff, so could handle the move ourselves, and because we were so close to Christmas friends who would have helped couldn’t. We were wrong, it was very hard, and moving my very heavy piano nearly defeated us. The house was a new build and earlier that day a gas engineer visited to certify that our new house could be connected to the mains…except he didn’t give us the certification…we had a leak. (Much later, in the New Year we discovered that a ‘helpful’ chippie had tried to secure a skirting board across the gap below the gas fire in the lounge by nailing it into the gas pipe. (!)) So we spent Christmas without any heating, apart from one electric radiator and an electric blanket that Graham went out to purchase on Christmas Eve. It was lucky we had an electric cooker, otherwise I would have had no way of preparing the turkey and ham and other Christmas fare that I’d bought. Looking back, I have no idea how we managed to do the move, do the food Christmas shop, and I had to work Christmas Eve. Wish I had as much energy now as I had in my 20s. I also managed to unpack enough kitchen stuff to cook the ham and stuff the turkey before turning into bed Christmas Eve (well, Christmas morning). It was a cold, cold Christmas, especially as it snowed Boxing Day, and it was so cold that the snow didn’t melt for almost a fortnight. Trust us to choose that Christmas to move house! It was certainly memorable though!

I hope the water point will continue to be available, it's one that we quite often use.

That sounds like a lovely event to attend. Wish we could, but we're not in Norfolk again until July unfortunately.