The Norfolk Broads Form One of the Largest Areas of Wetland in the BROAD LAND Country
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4 BRITAIN’S NATIONAL PARKS The Norfolk Broads form one of the largest areas of wetland in the BROAD LAND country. Martyn Oliver explores the landscape and its fascinating history with photographer Andy Midgley. Main picture Reeds line the edge of Breydon Water, a large tidal estuary near Great Yarmouth, where the Rivers Bure, Yare and Waveney meet. BRITAIN’S NATIONAL PARKS ITTING roughly on the Norfolk– which is responsible for the natural same time they maintain an oversight SSuffolk border between Norwich beauty of the area, the public’s of the area’s wildlife – in particular, and Lowestoft, and stretching north enjoyment of it, and the ‘navigation’. Edgar is watchful for the appearance for about 20 miles, lies the network of Under these headings, the Authority of bird flu in the wildfowl population. shallow lakes and rivers known as the looks after and balances the needs of The waterways themselves are also Norfolk Broads. For many years the nature and wildlife conservancy with monitored and maintained.Water area, which is now a National Park, those of both local residents and quality is paramount. At the moment, has been a magnet for holiday-makers visitors to the area.The Authority’s he told me, quality is improving, and nature-lovers, drawn to the members come from local authorities, though its achievement is a lengthy waterways, marshes and reedbeds. conservation bodies and local process, and there is valuable The Broads themselves are man- commerce and industry, and all three cooperation with landowners who made, the remains of medieval of these lend strong support. Indeed agree to limit spraying and fertilization peat-mining. Most of the area is when I meet Edgar Hoddy, one of the close to waterways. Bank erosion has formed of post-glacial peat deposits, Authority’s Countryside Rangers at been another problem. Some years ago and Norfolk peat has been cut as fuel Whitlingham Country Park on the the pleasure boats which thronged the for cooking and heating since Roman outskirts of Norwich, he is busy waterways in the holiday season would times. However, from about the ninth supervising a group of employees from often be driven too quickly, and the century, the population grew and each a local insurance company who are resulting wash would quickly break village had its own ‘turbery’ or digging constructing a boardwalk across a down the riverbanks.Today, the hire – it’s said that at one point the watermeadow in the pouring rain. companies adapt the boats’ motors to episcopal monastery of Norwich I ask Edgar to tell me about some limit their speed and the problem has requisitioned 200,000 bales of peat of the activities the Rangers find receded. However, more recently, every year. By the time the sea-level themselves involved in, and it seems rising water levels have brought their rose, 400 years later, flooding the that these are large and eclectic. own threat, and the Authority is diggings and forming the Broads as They’re responsible for maintaining the partway through a programme of they are today, around nine million hard infrastructure of the wetlands, improving the banks’ construction cubic feet of fuel had been extracted such as public moorings and footpaths. to enable them to resist these higher from Norfolk’s peat bogs. They’re also an important interface, not levels, and at the same time building The Broads and waterways are only with the public, but between the washes beside the waterways to maintained by the Broads Authority, Authority and local landowners.At the capture and retain the overflow from Right Brograve Mill near Sea Palling. Built in 1771, the mill originally had a boat shaped cap and two pairs of shuttered sails which powered an internal turbine pump for draining the levels and making them suitable for farming. Opposite, top Sunset at Hickling Broad, the largest expanse of open water in the Broads, and home to a large range of wildlife. Opposite, bottom Burgh Castle, on the River Waveney near Great Yarmouth. A late Roman- period fort, it was built to defend the area from Saxon raids and once overlooked the sea. K C O C D O O W N H O J 56 BEAUTIFUL BRITAIn / WINTER 2008 BRITAIN’S NATIONAL PARKS the highest tides. Once the tide Top left Martham River round the marsh harrier patrols the One of the main attractions of the waterway without a lock in sight. recedes, the overflow water can be House on the River Thurne, water margins and reedbeds. Broads is the Wherryman’s Way, a Overnight moorings are plentiful, and near West Somerton. pumped back into the river, and Rockland Broad, beside the Yare footpath which follows the River Yare so are the riverside pubs. Fuel for the within a very short space of time the Above left Day boats and just east of Norwich, is ideal for and its tributary the Chet between cruisers (and increasingly charging moored together at washes can once again be used for Wroxham. Boating has winter walkers. Footpaths between Great Yarmouth and Norwich. At one points for those with electric motors) grazing livestock. been an extremely popular the car park at Rockland Staithe, just time Norwich was one of the most are easy to find. Many of the marshes and reedbeds, pastime on the Broads, outside the village of Rockland St. important commercial centres in Sailing craft, however, depend upon such as those at Horsey Mere and especially after the Mary, and the RSPB hide on the edge England, and goods of all sorts were the wind to get from A to B; and Second World War. Rockland Broad, attract huge numbers of the broad, have been designed to brought upriver from the coast in when there is no wind, upon a long of migrating waterfowl in winter. Left The distinctive sail allow wheelchair access even during shallow-draft sailing vessels known pole known as a quant. A crew of the Hathor, a restored Horsey Mere, in the north, is a Site of wherry – the traditional a muddy winter. As well as kingfisher as wherries. Several of these wherries member carries the quant to the boat’s Special Scientific Interest which came working boat of the and brent, Canada and greylag geese, have been restored, and can be seen bow, plants it firmly in the river into the hands of the National Trust in Broads – at Horning. ducks such as goldeneye, tufted duck moored beside the river or bottom, and then holds on to it while 1948, along with the rest of the Above Horsey Windpump, and shoveler spend the winter at occasionally in majestic full sail. walking the length of the deck to the Horsey Estate.Winter visitors to the restored and owned by Rockland. Spring and summer visitors Sailing has always brought people stern. By repeating this manoeuvre mere will see several different kinds of the National Trust. to Rockland Broad and the to the Broads, and in summer the several times, a sailboat can often be geese, including pink-footed geese surrounding marshes include great waterways are thronged with motor moved from the shelter of a stand of from Iceland and Greenland. Ducks in crested grebe and Cetti’s warbler; and cruisers, yachts and dinghies. Of the trees back into the wind, and once their thousands include wigeon, ospreys will often visit for dinner in 41 broads, 18 are navigable, and they more she is under sail.The quant pole pochard, teal and gadwall. And all year spring and autumn. are linked by almost 220 miles of is also useful for negotiating bridges. 58 BEAUTIFUL BRITAIn / WINTER 2008 BEAUTIFUL BRITAIn / WINTER 2008 59 The bridge at Potter Heigham on the River Thurne, for example, is low – too low for a masted sailboat to pass beneath. However, Broads boats are built so their masts are easily lowered, and with the mast down they can be poled beneath the bridge. Experienced sailors can ‘shoot the bridge’ at Potter Heigham by dropping and raising the mast, almost without losing way. Although management of the Broads is a year-round enterprise, the vast majority of the region’s economy and viability today revolves around tourism, and is to a large extent seasonal. Many of the attractions are open only during the spring and summer; for example, the restored steamboat Southern Belle plies the river Yare between Great Yarmouth and Reedham – but only P.H.Emerson in the summer. Popular centres such as Acle, Beccles and Potter Heigham can he Victorian photographer P.H. the march of progress. He published his seem quiet and forsaken during the Emerson was a pioneer of Broads images of reed cutters (Norfolk reeds are T winter months. conservation.The railway had come to East still in demand for thatching) and lily However, this need not be a Anglia in the mid-nineteenth century and gatherers (water-lilies were used as bait disadvantage, for the Broads in winter, brought day trippers and holidaymakers to catch tench, at one time a staple of the with frost on the ground, raindrops in to what had been an isolated part of the Broads diet), of the waterways, mills and the hedgerows, log fires burning in the country with a way of life unchanged for wherries, in some of the earliest volume- pubs – and above all, peace and quiet – N hundreds of years. Emerson realized that the produced picturebooks. O I BB T are places of both calm and magic. C old ways were in danger of being lost for Though no doubt idealized and E L L O ever, and he set out to document the living romanticized, Emerson’s work provides us C N Above left P.H.