🙂 Boating, birdlife, relaxation…
We were very excited to hire a boat on the Norfolk Broads again – and this time it was with friends and it was Trent’s 18th Birthday! We used Richardson’s for easy booking. We started and ended our trip in Potter Heigham. It is a small place with a cafe, an all-purpose shop and a fish and chip shop are right by the marina, but we had to take a walk out to find the nearest pub for dinner, The Falgate Inn. On this trip we did most of our own cooking and braa’ing on the river banks. There are no locks in the Broads so it is plain sailing, so to speak, as long as you remember the key rules: overtaking on the left, sail before steam (or indeed engine, which meant the sail boats always have right of way). The kids absolutely loved it and entertained us with their singing and dancing antics. Highly recommend this as a short break. Dogs are welcome too. Lovely to be out in the fresh air.
The Broads are brimming with idyllic Norfolk villages and market towns, offering access to the coast and Great Yarmouth as well as the historic city of Norwich. With a large choice of convenient moorings, there are plenty of areas to explore on foot, all easily accessible from your hire boat!
Over sixty Broads and six distinct rivers were created as a result of flooding following early peat digging (the peat was an important source of fuel), which dates back to the Roman era. The managed reed marshes and wildlife habitats you see today attract over seven million visitors each year, offering tourists the opportunity to visit twenty five sites of special scientific interest. Waterways Holidays offer a wide choice of boating holidays to cover the 125 miles of safe, lock free open waterways, from over ten marinas across the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads. The Norfolk and Suffolk Broads are known collectively as Britain’s Magical Waterland and the Broads is a member of the family of National Parks. The Norfolk Broads, Britain’s largest protected wetland is packed full with spectacular and rare wildlife and plants, an example being the Swallowtail butterfly, Britain’s largest butterfly, unique to the Broads, appearing in June and sometimes August to September in warm summers. Dragonflies and damselflies also abound. You may be lucky and spot otters, water voles, the timid Chinese water deer and if you walk to the beaches beyond Horsey Wind Pump, grey seals which arrive in early winter to give birth to their pups and are still there in early spring/summer.
It was a memorable celebration of Trent’s 18th Birthday.
