YnysMon

There's a pontoon at Hardley Mill moorings, and also one at Oulton Broad dyke. I think there's a tiny pontoon at Whitlingham Broad park, but probably reserved for canoeists. I've often noticed day boats moored at Geldeston too, and there isn't as much rise and fall up there.

Heaters can be tricky. We’ve had a few problems in the past on Moonlight Shadow. Bit of a problem if there’s no fault reader though. To be honest, Graham and I rarely use the boat’s Webasto heater, having had issues with it on previous trips. We also find it rather noisy. During the winter months we have mostly hooked up to electric posts and used our dimplex heaters to heat the boat. When it’s particularly cold we also use a fan heater, though that does use up the credit on the post a lot more.

Wonderful! Irstead is magical.

A friend at work went to the Trooping of the Colour last Thursday. He (ex RAF) husband had managed to get two tickets via the British Legion. She said they had seats just behind the Royal Box. They both thoroughly enjoyed both the event and the flypast.

That’s great! Hope he had a good time.

It’s ages since we visited Liverpool, I think Harry (now in his 30s) was still in a pram. Another visit is long overdue!

That’s something me and Graham empathise with. Graham tried ordering some gadget that was supposed to boost the sound of the TV to my Mam’s hearing aids. Didn’t really help though. At least my Mam didn’t object to subtitles. When his Dad lived with us last year the TV was a lot more problematic. He doesn’t like wearing his hearing aids nor using subtitles, so Graham and effectively abandoned our lounge and spent a lot of time in our dining room. At least we had an alternative, which people in smaller homes don’t have. Talking about hearing problems…I just recalled a story my mother told me. She and her parents shared a small terraced home with her grandparents. In the 1950s her grandad was in his 80s. My Nain (Gran) saw an advert in a newspaper for a hearing aid, and ordered it for her father. She was completely disgusted when it arrived to find it was one of those Victorian era ear trumpets. Maybe that’s where my sceptical attitude towards adverts comes from.

A great start to you tale. Thanks for posting. I must try that walk to Candle Dyke sometime. We sailed along it, but I do like to walk along the rivers as you get a different perspective. Hope the weather improves for you and your friends.

I hope so too.

That sounds like a few good days out. Shame you didn't get into Ranworth church. It normally looks closed on a quiet day, even when it isn't. Did you try the door?

I loved this. Her Majesty has such a sense of humour.

The only hesitation I’ve had about our move up north is fitting in several full cruising days. I love how spread out things are down south. How do you do long cruising days up north without going over the same areas several times over your week? I must admit we’ve not had enough experience of a week confined to the north yet though.

Having re-read this post to re-live pleasant memories of old holidays, I thought I’d just add a comment on the exchanges about medication to prevent gastric reflux. Graham relied on that until about an year ago. However, he has been a very dedicated blood donor but in recent years had been turned down due to low iron levels. He started taking iron supplements, but they didn’t seem to make much difference. Then I read online a theory that gastric reflux is exacerbated by low levels of stomach acid, which also affects absorption of nutrients, and that cider vinegar can help with this. We are very sceptical about things we read online, but Graham tried it out, as just taking a small amount of vinegar in water seemed fairly low risk. He found the cider vinegar did help. More significantly, the next time he went to give blood found that his iron levels were very good. He’s not taking the medication any longer either, except as an occasional back up. What concerns us is, if absorption of iron is affected, what about all those other micronutrients, minerals and vitamins that the body and brain need? Is the medication that is supposed to help doing us harm? We don’t know, but I’m just sharing our experience in case it’s helpful to others.

I thought The Angel had closed again? Shame, as it seemed to be doing well for a short time after lockdown.

That’s a shame Jean. You could go for a short break and confine yourself to the Yare and Chet. Lot of lovely places to moor up at and visit.

I know a lot of people take the opportunity to ‘go for it’ on the autobahns. We have never done so, for the simple reason that the summer after we graduated one of my Uni friends died as a result of an accident on the autobahn. She went to Germany to work as an au pair. She loved the little boy she was looking after and his family, and they took her along with them for their summer holiday. Unfortunately, the had a tire blow-out on the way and she and the little boy died. It’s something that has stayed with me, particularly as we all felt on a high leaving Uni, with (as we thought) the rest of our lives before us.

Isn’t that an interesting difference in perspective. I look on a north to south passage as a highlight, a must unless we can’t do it because the tides aren’t conducive.

I don’t think we’ve ever hired/part owned anything that’s got more than a 6’10’ air draft (with roof down). Having started out our first hire on the Broads by getting under Potter Heigham bridge on our very first day (on a sailey), getting under the other low bridges on the Broads has been our top priority in our boat choice. Yes, it’s nice to have a lovely view on a boat with a higher air draft but we don’t want to be overly restricted on where we can access. However, I completely recognise that everyone has different priorities when choosing their boat.

Thank you so much for posting your holiday tale, I enjoyed the trip along with you very much. We are big fans of the southern broads. I like how you need to do quite a cruise to get anywhere, whereas up north the main spots are a lot closer to one another. I noticed you found that a lot of the popular mooring spots got filled up. How did you find the rivers though? I generally find that we can cruise without passing anything like as many boats as we would up north. The moorings are more spaced out, so maybe fewer moorings for the length of the rivers?

Don't keep us in suspense Neil. Did you manage to get back? I glanced at the Barnes Brinkcraft webcam during a pause in work yesterday afternoon and it looked like there was only six and a half foot or so. Mind you, it was around high tide. I also caught a glimpse of what looked like a hire boat try lining up for the bridge (noooo!). Luckily they thought better of it. p.s. Am I the only sad person who checks the state of the tides when looking at the webcams, and not on the Broads myself?

It’s just a few bends down from WRC. There used to a couple, or even three, of wood carvings resembling Easter Island heads on the bank, just one the last couple of times we’ve been past. It seems to be getting more overgrown than it had been.

Thanks Peter. We’ve only moored on the Island once, on our first trip to the Broads. Graham still thinks of it as goose poop city (we had a dog with us, so couldn’t avoid it). That stern moored boat looks very peculiar. The trouble with handovers to newbies is that there’s just far too much information to take in, so I wonder if they just misunderstood one instruction. Im amazed you take any pictures. I find it difficult enough, and I’m not solo helming.

Wow, you packed in a lot! So much that I overlooked how short a stay you had! Shame about the electric at Whitlingham, but at least the moorings are still open. I have a suspicion that they didn’t retain the electric as one or two liveaboards might not have observed the 24hour rule when they were BA moorings. I might be wrong, but it seemed that the same boats were there on several of the occasions when we passed.

Thank you so much for posting Jonathan. Sounds like you had a lovely week! We must try out those walks at Cantley and The Oulton Dyke moorings sometime. Were you able to go into Hardley Church? It’s really fascinating inside, some of the the best bits being the old carvings of sail boats that the kids of the parish graffiti’d on the backs of some of the pews. Also, I as glad to see that the moorings at Whitlingham are available again, having been closed overwinter. Did you notice whether the electric posts have been removed or not? Good to see that there are works going on to reopen the Commissioner’s Cut fully again. I especially love blogs where you can glean such a lot of information!

That sounds a bit daft. I wonder if they’ve tried opening in the evening instead?