kpnut

Thursday 16th Feb My birthday!!!! And that was a walk and a half today. It was actually the exact walk (with a couple of extra short ‘getting lost’ detours) but done differently to my plan. Being here for a couple of days to check on the boat refit work I’d decided my birthday would be spent on an exploration of the Halvergate marshes. The plan was to park at Wickhampton church, head across the marsh to pick up the Weavers way to Berney Arms, then up the river towards Yarmouth and turn across the marsh again at Lockgate Mill. I had intended to watch the video of it that Ynys Mon had posted a week or so ago, but for various reasons, hadn’t. The walk started on a concrete track by the church and was very pleasant, dry underfoot even though it’s rained today, and not muddy. It then branched left along a wide grassy track, again clean. At one point there were some signs saying cows and calves in one field and bull in another, and there weren’t any in sight. I was musing on this and thinking maybe the signs should be put there only when there are, to stop people just ignoring them and then coming a cropper. I was also thinking that the Broads still has plenty of wildlife, after putting up numerous, and large, flocks (skeins?) of geese and seeing quite a few pairs of swans in the dykes and, for better or worse, a number of muntjac deer. I would think there are water voles too as I heard a few ‘plops’ every now and again. I carried on my merry way, but getting a bit puzzled about the various landmarks I could see as, by this time, some didn’t quite match the map. It’s quite disorientating as at one point I could see 7 wind pumps, but a few minutes later only 4 maybe. It’s so low lying that the perspective is very odd. I kept on, going through gates that weren’t locked and over bits of planks across dykes but thinking more and more that I didn’t know where I was. The gates seemed to have signs on - some had white strips of vinyl nailed on as a cross, and other had the same strips but in the shape of an arrow. I only realised this after going through some gates with crosses! At one point I used the compass to check and was going in completely the opposite direction to what my gut was telling me. Most odd I thought. I do have confidence in my map reading skills! I arrived at a junction that sort of looked on the map like one I could have been at, but the Acle Straight by this time seemed rather too close. I should have crossed the railway by this time too (well a long time ago). To cut a long story short, I’d missed the path onto the Weavers Way right back where the ‘bull in field’ sign was, and had by now completely reversed my walk. I realised once I got to two mills near each other, High’s mill and Howard’s mill with farm buildings nearby. Then it all made sense again. I was about 2km north of where I’d intended to be, oops!! A cottage called Marsh Farm by Howard’s mill was very pretty by goodness knows where the access is. Surely they don’t drive down this track? I came down to Breydon just by Lockgate Mill and was very happy to see the water. I followed the river path south west to Berney Ams. The phone was getting low on power and I was hoping for one last photo at Berney Arms but it ran out of juice before the yellow post at the Yare junction came into view. I was treated to seeing the train from Lowestoft stopping at the Berney Arms railway station. Later, I looked up the timetable to find it was the 3.24, so at least I had a marker for the time at that point, not being able to check the time in my dead phone. I was not at all impressed by the mud bath at the Berney Arms moorings and ‘note to self’ that if mooring there, to be as near to the mill as possible as it’s the only clean bit of bank. Turning up the weavers way, away from the river at Berney Arms I started to pick up the footpath signs from one gate to the next. Good, I thought, it’ll be easy now, but even do I managed to lose the path between the mill and the railway station! And after crossing the line, at one gate/bridge I went through it distinctly pointed me to carry on alongside the dyke. Doing this and thinking ‘these dykes are getting a bit wide’ with no planks across, I reminisced about a holiday I once had in the Vendee in France, a wetland similar in many ways to the Broads, without the boats. To jump the dykes, the marshmen do something called ‘ningle jumping’ using a long stout pile they sort of polevault across the dykes, but without letting go of their ningle pole. I could have done with one. It got a bit out of hand and I realised I was off course yet again. Not being able to check the time, I knew it was getting on as the light was beginning to fade and I certainly didn’t want to be wandering round in circles on the marsh in the dark, so made for a gateway that looked promising and sure enough, picked up the path again. This then returned me to the ‘bull in field’ gateway and it was just a matter of retracing my steps along the grassy track and then the concrete road. Once back at my accommodation, I watched the video and the lad did say he had gone off course a few times, even though it wasn’t his first time doing his walk. The problem is losing the landmarks so easily. You move away from a dyke to get over a side dyke and you only have to go a few yards and the dyke you were following just disappears and the marsh just looks completely flat again. During the day, not too much of an issue but with fading light it does become a bit more urgent to know where you are. my other problem was I don’t know the features of the individual mills, so what I initially thought was Polkeys mill in the distance was actually Berney Arms so when I started straying away from it, it didn’t seem odd. I would not want to be out there if it was misty. On the way back up the concrete track I spotted a barn owl flying across the field toward the track. I stopped and it flew in front of me, going behind a tree. I crept forward slowly and it appeared again between two trees, straight down the middle of the track toward me, then, suddenly noticing me, veered off slightly to my side. But then, about three arms lengths away, it just stayed hovering and staring straight at me as if to say “ hello, what are you doing here?” It then just floated away, certainly not fazed by its encounter with me. This is going to be one of my ‘must do’ walks when cruising on the south side with my walking buddy. I saw so much wildlife, and at one point I commented to myself on the noise -all the geese. At the point the phone ran out, my mileage counter said 5 miles, so I imagine the whole walk would be approx 9 or so.

I tried to visit Wickhampton church today. The sign said it’s open daily but the first door I tried was locked and after walking all round the exterior, and finding the ‘normal’ door with the porch, as in most churches round here, the porch door was open, but the inner door had a hefty padlock on it. Never mind, I’m going to try Halvergate tomorrow. I did find quite an interesting memorial stone though. Maybe some folk on here knew of this man. He was obviously well thought of, by some at least.

That happened to me FF. I’d backed all the way down to get in the back left corner, the only spot left. So I thought it’d be easier to just go straight down the middle and pull it over on the ropes. And ‘clonk’, as the rudder grounded and then had to scrape on the bottom/hard mud as I went forward to release it. After mooring up, I got my boat hook to test the depth, it was VERY shallow just by the safety ladder. Point taken about reporting it.

Also an earlier paragraph on the same page got me pondering too. “A further complication is that the direction of the tide-induced currents does not change at the same time as the water attains it’s highest and lowest levels. At Reedham for example the gradients set up on the river Yare during a tidal cycle cause the ebb to continue to run until the water downstream has attained the same level as that upstream. During this period, the water level will be rising at Reedham even though the tide is on the ebb. After a brief period of slack water, the gradient in the river will be reversed, and the tide will flow upstream on the flood until the water levels in the lower reaches of the river have fallen sufficiently to cause another gradient reversal, and a consequent change in the direction of the tidal current”. So the bottom line is the water runs in two directions at once. I’m totally confused and will just rely on my what I see!!! Hope someone finds this of interest and no-one loses any sleep over it!

Following on from a discussion a few days ago, (which I now can’t find), during which we were musing on why the aweigh app was giving odd readings, I decided to start reading a very large book I’ve had for years. The Land Use, Ecology and Conservation of Broadland by Martin George, published in 1992. It’s a book I won in the raffle at an open day at Barton Broad Nature Reserve in about 1997 and has been in the possession of my daughter for the last 15 years while she went off to uni to study freshwater ecology. She recently found it in her muddle and returned it to me. A passage on page 60 (just in case anyone else has this book and wants to look it up) caught my eye. I’ll have to quote it word for word I’m afraid. “At Yarmouth yacht station the river continues to ebb for about an hour and a quarter after the tide has started to flow up the river Yare (thus carrying water from the Bure up into Breydon Water). But the water in the Bure is rising rather than falling during this period. Conversely, water levels in the lower Bure start to fall long before the the flood tide has ceased to run. At Stokesby for example, the upstream flow continues for almost 2 hours after the water level has started to drop. Similarly, the ebb commences in Fleet Dyke and Ranworth Dam while the sections of the river Bure with which these waterways are connected are still on the flood”. Now, for those very familiar with the Broads and their tides etc, that’ll be no surprise, but it poses lots of questions and certainly should encourage us all to look out of the window and ‘watch the bubbles’ rather than relying too much on the tide tables. If water coming of the Ranworth Dam on the ebb meets water still going up the Bure on the flood, that must mean that the ebbing water is actually carried upstream rather than down.

In New Zealand, in a similarly unstable environment, a lot of the buildings are built on giant shock absorbers.

In three years of living nearby, I never did find Telford town centre.

And mum’s corner since her death in the autumn and me putting done flowers in the water there with a glorious sunset to accompany them downstream. So you’ll have to share it Griff. (But it’s always Griff’s corner in my write-ups)😊 Last time I passed it, someone had been strimming the bank so plenty of room for us all!!

Oh, Flying Fortress, finding out why is surely part of the fun of life. Not when you were told to st school, but now as an ‘elder’. Maybe if the less dense water, on top, is deeper than the draft of the boat you just pretend the other stuff underneath is not there. And go with what the surface is doing, as you said, mk1 eyeball. How you’d tell how deep it is I wouldn’t hazard a guess apart from if it were a different colour. You do sometimes see different colour waters not mixing when swimming in the sea, something I partake in as little as possible.

Must be magic!!!😁

So is the water coming in running underneath the water going out, something to do with salinity and different density perhaps?

We get BBC Look North at home and live nearer Hull than either York or Leeds. But because the only signal we can get is with the aerial picking up the Look North transmission from Leeds, we only the ever get Leeds/west yorks news. Very rarely a mention of east yorks. It’s as if we don’t exist. It’s not that they’re not broadcasting the local news, just that we can’t pick it up. It was the same at my mum’s. Living in mid Sussex and only 10miles north of Brighton, her news came from Portsmouth. The one common factor was a dirty great stretch of hills in between the BBC ‘local office’ and the house. Her case the South Downs, mine the Yorkshire Wolds. So maybe your aerial needs twizzling. I can’t see hills being a problem in Norfolk but low lying transmitters might be. We all know the problems with getting a tv signal on the Broads.

Bit easier for a man to check! Ssyjng that, I do look for bubbles, but not made by me.

Yes, I have a number of times since about oct/nov if I remember correctly. even saying it’s rising when their times indicate it’s falling etc. I remember a trip when we were discussing it quite a lot. I also have real difficulty getting it tell me my ‘speed’. It normally says 0 even though it can pinpoint exactly where I am, so presume it’s not a problem with it getting a signal. I assume there’s some techie reason for this and don’t need it to tell me as I’m pretty good at knowing if I’m going too fast, by just looking outside.

Just seen the non electric ones on Amazon. An insulated bag, called Wonderbag.

In the ‘olden days’, when I was a youngster and spending part of every summer camping in the back of beyond, we used a haybox to do the same. Put the big dixie, preheated with the breakfast, inside the haybox overnight and the porridge was miraculously ready first thing in the morning. You two, Jim and Griff have decided me to get a slow cooker for the boat. My stove at home has a built-in warming oven that I use for the same purpose, just heats everything using a standard lightbulb. Rice pudding is to die for!

That’s a nice idea. Good to see you’re out and about, making the most of this super sunshine. I have very itchy feet to be put but the boat’s having work done at the moment.

Thanks Simon. She is just made for cuddling!

Can we have a photo of Bramble soon please, Simon? I expect she’s grown (even a bit?)

I have a book called ‘British cookery’ or something similar and that’s in there. I unfortunately can’t get away with anything with lamb in as Tony doesn’t like it. A shame seeing as it’s my favourite and I used to earn my living producing it!

Thanks for posting that Simon. Nice to see more ‘reasonable’ prices. I’m going to try it out in March when my friends come onboard.

What a lovely memory you’ve shared. Thankyou, and welcome.

I found that bit about the Tunstall church ruin very interesting. Another place to go and find for myself. And Halvergate looks a nice spot to visit too. I had always presumed it was just maybe a farm building or two in the middle of nowhere, I suppose because I’ve heard of Halvergate marshes and thought they were remote and bleak! How wrong was I? My apologies to anyone local.

Evolution usually improves on things, making a species ‘fitter’. Not sure humankind is being very successful.

It was an agric college. I don’t think we’d have noticed much difference in the clientele, especially on rugby club night!!! When I worked in the brewery I bagged up the spent mash out of the tun and my dairy farmer friend picked it up every couple of days for the cows. Wonder if it altered the flavour of the milk? Freshly drained spent mash is a really lovely taste. Bit like sweet grainy and slightly watery porridge.