Last boat launched

Royall Courier was the last boat to be launched a couple of weeks ago.

By boat and foot to Alderfen Broad

The weather forecast for today was not particularly hopeful but when we peered outside it seemed more promising than indicated and so we decided on a boat trip to Horning church followed by a walk to Alderfen Broad. We were going to make the most of our last Saturday off before the start of the new season.

As Sara began to prepare lunch I uncovered PERFECT LADY and backed her out of the dyke with some difficulty due to the extremely low water levels to turn her. Last weekend we had already taken off her winter covers and spring cleaned her out and motored down river last Sunday afternoon for her first trip out.  Today we loaded our various eating and walking items aboard, hung the gun punt PLOVER on the yacht’s transom and lit the wood burner and amidst curling smoke we started away.

By the time we turned onto Wroxham broad it had come over rather murky and a herd mute swans which had flown downstream a few minutes earlier had found shelter in the first bay, the weather may be why the river was so quiet apart from one or two day boats.  This may be one reason, or the low water another but from here right down to Horning church, apart from the village itself, it was teaming with wildfowl, more so than I think we have ever seen before.

Of course the normal coots were gathered on the main river beyond the broad but they also spread the whole river length along with rafts of tufted ducks and flotillas of pochards, both male and female and all diving for molluscs. They almost seemed quite tame and only the extremely nervous tufties took flight as we drew near or did their usual trick of slipping back through the narrow entrance dyke and into the Devil’s Hole at Woodbastwick Old Hall seen through a screen of saplings.

Motoring through Horning we were surprised by the lack of boats generally and decided to moor on the island whilst I paddled across to the staithe in the punt to visit the deli which is full of the most wonderful cakes, flans and pies, and where not surprisingly my order grew somewhat.

Clutching my brown paper bag of goodies I sculled over to the yacht and we proceeded past the old Southgates yard, looking sad and derelict being totally devoid of yachts apart from the wherry yacht WHITE MOTH and the pleasure wherry ARDEA hidden in the gloom of the wet shed along side. WHITE MOTH is receiving extensive coach roof repairs having been sold away to new owners who are we believe then loaning her to Wherry Yacht Charters in Wroxham as their only revenue earning boat.

The mooring at Horning church being totally free of boats we dropped in, leaving PLOVER dangling in the reeds so as not to get in anybodies way, however we needn’t have worried on that score.

We ate Sara’s lunch followed by my purchases and locking the yachts doors headed up the path alongside the vicarage toward St Benedicts church on the high ground with its tower surmounted by four of the apostles. The church is quite delightful with a bed of rather tired snow drops growing amongst the grave stones.

Once through the covered gate we noticed a Victorian post box on the gate post of a nearby house and then made a little mistake in walking toward the school instead of straight on, however, a quick diversion soon remedied this and in lightly falling rain we crossed a field toward the main Horning, Ludham road.

Funnily enough I had recently mentioned to Sara that I wondered where the path that we were now about to walk along went to and so we were soon to find that beyond a couple houses we were out onto the wide open Horning grazing marshes on a very pretty drift way or cattle track heading in a straight line toward some extremely nice houses out in the middle of nowhere at Browns Hill.

As we proceeded along the now ash driveway we neared two tumble down cottages from one of which a barn owl flitted out and away across the marshes.

At Browns Hill we had taken shelter under the trees from a fairly heavy rain shower but once this had passed the weather grew progressively brighter until we finished the walk in bright sunshine.

The area is very well off for footpaths, both permanent and concessionary and several different routes, both longer or shorter than ours could be taken from this point. We could now have veered around Neatishead hall and back toward Horning village but instead entered the woods surrounding Alderfen broad glimpsed through the tree’s. Alderfen is owned by the Norfolk Wildlife Trust and a bit further round has a small car park.

Paths twist and turn through the woods and alongside various fast flowing clear drainage dykes and a view of the broad showed it teeming with tufties and wigeon “wheeooing” loudly to each other. At the car park we walked alongside a dyke opposite to a tumble down punt shed the short distance to a screen overlooking the broad where strangely no tufties or wigeon were to be seen but there was a raft of gadwall and coots.

Oops we’ve gone wrong again following the marked circular path which in any case is worth a walk around, we should instead have turned along the lane toward Three Hammer common. Strangely, whilst in the reserve we noticed across a dyke system several shooting hides that must be quite ancient as the supporting willows had taken root into now fairly large pollarded trees, it seemed odd though being able to shoot right alongside a nature reserve but I know that a very similar case applies at Rockland broad.

Following a country lane brought us to the old Neatishead radar station and museum. We had thought that there was a Phantom aeroplane here in use as a gate guardian but we could only see a missile launcher of some sort and have since found out that the Phantom was cut up for scrap when the station closed in 2005 to the dismay of the museum staff as it had not in fact resided there long having been delivered suspended underneath a Chinook helicopter.

From here we cut across a field directly into Horning and along the busy river front, continuing past Southgates shed, soon I believe to be redeveloped so we took a photograph of the old sign and on toward the church once again and through a small gate with an LNER railway sign proclaiming a forty shilling fine for leaving the gate open, which is exactly how we found it earlier. By now we had walked seven and a half miles more or less none stop and were fairly shattered.

Following a quick brew and half a delicious rhubarb pie each I swung PERFECT LADY on her ropes and we motored home. Along this next reach I was keeping a sharp look out amongst the dazzling pure white tufty bodies for a couple of chestnut headed ducks seen earlier, however my old identification book proved correct and they were not rare visitors but female pokers with especially bright heads. Opposite Horning ferry a large number of teal had gathered up a narrow muddy dyke.

Returning to our moorings proved interesting as the tide had dropped further since this morning meaning that firstly the yachts keel dug in and we slid in a straight line past the entrance (this is not helped by a previous owner doing away with her balanced rudder as although she steers superbly in astern she is terribly slack in ahead, this is soon to be remedied) and secondly that we could hardly get her near enough to the bank to get ashore.

Launching Royall Oak

Life boat launching Royall Oak but this time taken from inside the shed.

Crane Country

The weather forecast is for a nice sunny day but chilly. We decide to go for a bit of a nature ramble. An otter has been seen several times recently trotting along the Royall Retreat’s board walk and here at home close to where Perfect Lady 2 is moored. Also, as we stood in the yard car park one morning a couple of weeks ago a fine low flying herd of eleven wild swans swept over with enormous silent wing beats. They were sort of half grunting , half hooping but whether they were hoopers or bewicks we could not tell being directly underneath them.

Sara makes a delicious lunch and I make up strong coffee in a flask and indeed the weather does look promising but when we drive into the National Trust car park at Horsey Mill, clouds are already rolling in and a biting wind cuts along the coast.

From the car park we walk back along the road toward West Somerton turning off along a footpath that winds through pasture alongside the Hundred stream then cuts across to Martham broad where a small raft of mixed coots, pochards and tufties dive for food in the rolling swell.

Amidst the vast reed beds small areas have been scythed right down to water level and the bunches stacked and covered await collection at the small Somerton boathouse behind which, quite a herd of geese are grazing. This is where we once saw great squadrons of pink footed geese noisily drop in to feed but today it is just greylags.

In a meadow just here Ben Benns took two years to build the famous trading wherry LORD ROBERTS now laying just a rotting hulk behind SOLACE’s winter quarters. LORD ROBERTS was the last wherry to work commercially, carrying a last freight of railway sleepers sometime around April 1969.

As we turn into the village we wonder if Grandfather’s first hire cruiser for the fleet is still sitting in a driveway, but no ROYAL TIMES has either gone for restoration or what is more likely considering her state when last we saw her, broken up for firewood.

We round the backs of a couple of cottages and cross a field before ambling along the Holmes Road toward the coast. At the rear of a herd of thickset grazing rams, lies an abandoned duck decoy worked by George Skelton up to January 1840 and then succeeded by his son, but it was reported as laying disused by around 1890.

It is terribly flat here and the wind cuts across it coldly with nothing to hinder it. A cattle yard at Winterton Holmes holds quite a herd of cows and inquisitive calves no doubt looking forward to nice sunny days out on the pasture. A large steaming pile of straw and muck makes us suck our teeth in a bit but soon we turn long the base of the sand dunes at a line of WW2 concrete tank trap blocks at Winterton Ness.

Tillie and Raven charge about amongst the coarse grass tussocks sniffing out rabbits who wisely refuse to play until we pass over the dunes (the hounds now safely on the leads) and onto the beach where there are a surprisingly large number of Common Seals hauled out, snoozing the day away. However it is bitterly cold and windy and as we take some photographs and Sara videos a couple of pups lying right at the top of the beach it begins to hail and the wind is whipping up the dry sand into our faces, so we struggle along the busy beach before climbing across the dunes once more and into relative shelter for lunch.

We do not loiter though as we soon get cold sitting about so once more walk along the track toward Horsey gap passing as we do so a WW2 pill box.

Obviously the whole coastal region was well defended during not only the last war but also during the First Great War when the River Ant was a main defence line and along which several WW1 pill boxes survive. These differ slightly from the later models in that they are normally circular not hexagonal, although the two WW1 pill boxes near Vauxhall, Yarmouth on the Acle straight are square. Anyway as usual the Horsey box is full of rubbish and lord knows what, I found it rather strange that the entrance faced the sea but there must have been a reason.

At the road junction to Horsey gap there is a small tea rooms called Poppylands which appeared quite busy with a varied array of hill-billy vehicles in the car park so it may well repay a visit, especially if thirsty or hungry.

Crossing the road we enter crane country proper. Fired up somewhat by recently reading John Buxton and Chris Durdin’s excellent book ‘The Norfolk Crane’s Story’ (a very thoughtful Valentines gift from Sara) and indeed as the sun finally breaks through we head toward Brograve Mill as shown on the front cover of the book, but alas no cranes are to be seen anywhere, however a very large flight of noisy pink footed geese does circle and land in a field further away.

Walking along Waxham cut we still hope for a crane sighting but only a lone cormorant speeds overhead as we cross a meadow and pass the Summer house and the small bay of Horsey Mere by the slightly decrepit punt shed. Years ago two gun punts lived in here, a proper gunning one in which Major Buxton and his crewman Cree went out with the big gun and which is pictured in the Crane book and a quite famous glass bottomed bird watching punt, both sadly have now disappeared.

And so we arrive back at the mill after nearly bang on ten miles walking. We are warmer now as not only is the sun making a go of it but of course it is more sheltered here. If you wish you could divert off to the Nelsons Head for a drink or some dinner and peruse their punt gun hanging above the fire place which I was assured recently was a modern replica made out of a scaffolding pole and as my informant told me you need only to feel down the end of the muzzle with a finger tip to see if it is rough or smooth inside.