dom

Was looking around for images of the area, as I wanted to remind myself what David Wall's used to look like. Found the second image down on this page: https://sprowstonhistory.weebly.com/norwich-road-wroxham.html I'd actually forgotten that it used to have petrol pumps at one time. Can also see the houseboats on Bridge Broad. One of them was lived in by a very dodgy character who spent half his time in prison and was rumoured to be the person to go to if you wanted to buy illicit firearms!

I can't remember exactly which model it was, but one of Audi's first Quattro models fitted with a catalytic converter had similar issues. The exhaust itself was staggeringly expensive due to the new catalyst and you had to drop half the drive train to change it. One of my customers at the time had one and I seem to recall the total bill after labour was somewhere in the region of £9k or so - which probably equated to 2/3rds of the cost of a Golf GTi at the time. I suspect a very lucrative market in aftermarket alternatives quickly developed!

Also known as a "Sony timer" in some circles. Supposedly, it's an urban legend, but I used to sell a lot of Sony electronic products and they had a remarkable ability to fail shortly after the warranty ran out.

That was probably very sound advice at the time, but phones, PCs and electric cars really are driving some pretty rapid change with battery and charging technology, which is breaking down a lot of the old hurdles. Newer smart alternators, coupled to a modern DC/DC charger and lithium or similar batteries can increase power output several times over compared to 10 years ago. If you can find space for a few 100 watts of solar, even better still. If you look at a basin full of canal boats now, a significant percentage have solar. If you can get 500w of solar on board, 6 hours of sunlight and you can run an oven for an hour, without having to pay anything for fuel. Add a solar dump to a calorifier element and you can heat water once your batteries are topped up too. The capital investment needed is also dropping all the time. I suspect your yard owner's advice will probably hold true for heating for some time to come though!

Phone numbers changed to 6 digits in the early 80s. David Wall was opposite Broads Tours until 1990, when they built the current premises on Littlewood Lane industrial estate. The garage used to be where the current Art&Glass place is and I'm sure they always had an array of vintage cars in the showroom which they still use now. I don't think there were any buildings on the left hand side of the site in those days - a lad I knew from school worked there (and still does) and I think his car was always parked on that side. I checked the London Gazette and the notice to strike off is there in 1982, but no sign of an address unfortunately. I'm fairly sure there used to be a high end antiques store on Grange Walk - probably in or around the old dairy in front of Windboats. I suspect it might be related to that.

I've been doing a bit of research into historic boatbuilders again this evening. Whilst doing so, I got to wondering who the oldest recreational boatbuilder was on the Broads. Can anyone shed any light on who this might have been? There was a similar thread on boatbuilders on here 15 odd years ago and loads of yards mentioned going well back into the 1800s, but I suspect most, if not all were probably building commercial vessels. The earliest examples I can see are Ernest Collins (Maidie) and Herbert Bunn in 1904 (slightly spookily, Herbert was actually buried on this day 1911, which made my hair stand on end a bit!).

First thought I had was a very old view of Horning Reach and the "big stick" is the chimney for Horning steam mill.

I'd like to see it reduced full stop. That's one of the reasons the BA really frustrates me. They're supposedly this great green defender, only interested in conservation, yet they've allowed my home town of Wroxham to be completely over-developed. The two examples which really stick in my throat are the old Bridge restaurant site (across to the old Broads Tours wet shed) and the former Jack Powles site up on the bend by Staitheway Road. The former was open land with trees. It's now been destroyed and turned over to housing ruining the view from the Kings Head area. The bridge is also a defining feature of the village, but now has a much taller restauant looming over it. If it's a notional Natural Park, why allow houses to displace nature and reduce the appearance of the area? In the latter case, the brownfield JP site has been turned over to yet more housing. If permission for housing had been refused, sooner or later, it would have been re-used for commercial purposes. That wouldn't necessarily mean boating, but would mean jobs for young people in the area. If it sits there for a long time unused, then find grant or similar funding to convert it to a public marina, which would provide an amenity and allow the current generation of huge hireboats to moor with ease, bringing more money into the local economy. Anything but more housing which, once established is pretty much there for all eternity. If you compare the area now, to when the BA were established, it's unrecongisable and has lost almost all of its character and history. Allowing that to happen whilst proclaming themselves a National Park seems completely hypocritical to me.

There's some interesting change on the horizon with battery technology, which might have a bearing on all of this. First generation Sodium Ion batteries are just starting to appear. They have some massive advantages, including being far more stable than lithium, so the fire issue becomes much less common - and sodium is relatively cheap and easy to source, without the need for huge, environmentally damaging mines. No doubt 1st generation products will have lots of issues, but after a generation or two (probably 1-2 years), there's a very real chance we'll have access to cheap, safe batteries with comparable capacity to lithium. Once that becomes the case, it'll be more practical to opt for electrical cooking by choice. It may also pave the way for legislative change. New domestic gas boilers are already attracting surcharges. If decent alternative technology exists, it's not unreasonable to drive out gas from boating and other leisure uses. It's interesting from a convenience perspective but, as Mouldy points out, completely meaningless until Greta and co start to have a go at China, rather than our tiny carbon emissions and already quite responsible policies.

Local plan rule DM33 stops planning permission being issued for basins or marinas unless a certain number of public spaces are provided. For developments of 30+ moorings, 15% of the total have to be given over "at nil cost to the Broads Authority" as short stay visitor moorings. If there are no pump-out or water facilities in the vicinity, they also have to be provided. Obviously, you don't have to be a huge cynic to see that the planning rule isn't as good as first appears. BA can claim to be creating new spaces, but there's nothing to stop the site owner making excessive mooring charges, as has happened in at least one other location. Hopefully HPC are public spirited and either offer free/cheap mooring, or good facilities for visitors such as water, power, etc at a sensible rate.

But are you trying to change things? Have you bought a house and now expect to influence planning to reduce industry or tourism in your locality? Are you pushing the NP agenda to help further those goals? That's the bit which I was really referring to in the context of this topic. One of the reasons I'm particularly vocal about it is that I was, to a degree, driven out by the onset of the decline of the boating industry and lack of prospects as a young person in Broadland (and that was as an academic high achiever). Having worked long and hard over several decades, I now want to move back to the area, but the job market is far from healthy and the cost of accommodation is disproportionaly expensive. I'd love to be in the same position but sadly the cost of living in the area I still call home is currently preventing me buying somewhere to retire to. I'd happily live on a boat, but the BA's stance on this effectively renders it impossible to do as a hard working, law abiding person these days.

I think this is one of the reasons why I don't particularly like the way that Facebook is being used as the primary vehicle for the group. You have to go digging about to find what their purpose or achievements are. You can bet a lot of the group members have never done anything like this and are just blindly clicking follow for a bit of gossip and excitement. The danger then is, you get an apparently large group of supporters but, when you come to lean on them, they're either completely unengaged or, worse still, on the opposing side. I desperately want to see a group succeed in getting the boating community's voice better heard, but will happily bet £50 that BRAG won't oust JP during the course of this year. If I lose, I'll be the happiest I've ever been to settle a debt.

I think this is a key problem area. Increasingly, the Broads is suffering "Burnham Market Syndrome". Large numbers of incoming surburban retirees driving up house prices, marginalising working class people from the leisure and similar industries, then complaining about traffic, noise, etc from holidaymakers disturbing their bird watching or paddleboarding. They then join parish councils and use either affluence or commercial experience to influence planning decisions, which all feeds back to the BA, shaping future policy. It's evident that BA are now choosing to completely ignore or override the nav committee's input. As such, I think the status quo is that the former group are winning and the holiday and boating industry is on the ropes. I think it needs much more input from local government, but I find it worrying that the whole toll fees, multiple MP letter seems to have lost momentum without seemingly achieving much. I wonder what, if anything, is happening in the way of follow up. I want to support BRAG. I'm on the side of the boating community, have worked in a yard and have deeper connections to the history of the industry. I just find the group a bit ineffectual though. On any given day, there'll be someone posting irrelevant, irrational, or just plain nonsense content to the group (all now seen by Duncan Baker who's recently joined). Before Christmas, you had a yard owner proposing paying last year's toll as a protest mechanism, which, if adopted by the majority, would have caused a massive issue for BA, possibly one JP might have chosen not to fight. That all seems to have got lost though and the group is currently full of ranting about dredging for flood management, which isn't generally a BA issue. If, as you say, the objective is to oust JP, then that ought to be clear and the sole focus of proceedings. There are some fairly obvious ways in which you could make his position far less comfortable.

Don't know about facilities, but 8 public moorings appear to have been included to satisfy planning rules.

Was that aimed at me? If so, it's a forum. People dip in and out and take discussion in whatever way their thoughts happen to meander. That's how forums work. It's a recreational pastime, not a dictatorship. Besides, it's not really changing the topic - just pointing out that the National Park system is far from perfect.

You mean the one teeming with phosphorus from raw human effluent? Not exactly a glowing example of how to manage a waterway. If National Park status is such a huge benefit for conservation, how come water quality in Windermere is the worst it has ever been, and biodiversity has been decimated, putting rare species at risk?

EA have a dedicated flood team who deal with these things. They obviously have a reasonable grasp on things, to be able to get the levels down so quickly. It was staggering to see how quickly it fell. Earith fell by a foot or so in 24 hours, so thankfully we now have a road again. Just a shame that in the meantime, at least one boat went down and several went adrift. There was a cruiser loose up on the Old West, which I suspect may still be drifting around on its own.

It's a typical arrangement, but always strikes me as particularly inelegant. You'd think by now someone could have come up with a quiet pump which'll run in free air without damage, which could be connected directly to the tray outlet. Or even a pump which only operates when there's water in its incoming line.

Herbert Woods picnic boats have a fridge - "Also there is a small fridge, sink and toilet." https://www.herbertwoods.co.uk/book/picnic-boat-hire/

Has anyone tried one of the new generation infrared panel heaters? They're really cheap now, really low wattage and seem like a good option in a small area like a boat cabin.

Just as long as the "safe" place isn't in an anchor locker which you can't open with the mudweight down

The only concern I have is that one of the engineers from Barnes has commented to a family member on several occasions that it's their number one cause of callouts these days when motors fail or similar. I've often wondered how easy it'd be to self rescue if one fails on you on a privately owned boat. I don't particularly fancy the idea of hauling a decent sized mudweight up on a chain by hand.

To be fair, Westview seem to be really going out of their way to safeguard people's boats there too. The chap who owns the place also has a driveway full of cars presumably belonging to marina residents which have been moved to escape the flood waters. It's just the fact they're so prone to flooding in the first place which is becoming a concern. I think if I was living further afield, I'd swallow the cost and go with Jones, but I'm only a couple of miles up the road, so can always head over easily to check mooring lines, etc if things get bad. The Old West is less vulnerable, but there's been a cruiser adrift there, a narrowboat loose on the Little Ouse and several issues with lines pulling boats down at Tiptree, so it's not entirely trouble free there either. Denver would be quite an attractive option, but everyone's been sat on mud for the last week or so again.

My work situation is a bit fluid at the moment, so not committing to anything at the moment, but I'd been thinking I might buy a smaller boat and moor it at either Westview or Pike & Eel. The situation at the moment has really put me off though. The Old West isn't completely unaffected, but seems much less prone to extreme conditions. I think I might look more seriously at Fish & Duck, Tiptree or Upware as possible options if I do look at keeping something on the RGO. Being local, I don't want to spend a lot of money on a boat I can't use for half the year. The basin by the shop was quite empty and I was a bit distracted by a nice looking aft cockpit Fairline Mirage, so I didn't notice Sweep. If I'm around again, I'll make a point of looking out for her. I'm not sure if Jones' might have moved some boats from the main basin into either the sales area or the new basin for more shelter?

Fair comment, but if you hired from the same yard year in, year out, should they still have to insist on a trial run every time? Even when they know and recognise you and recall how often you've hired? BA's own survey results show that 72% of hirers are returning for the second or more time, so this will be a fairly common scenario.