One of the very first things I did when writing ✓ Project Bucket List, before even finishing the list, was reach out to my pal Pinch and ask them if they wanted to rally troops and go rent a boat for a weekend. They were very down, so a group of us, including myself, Pinch, Jon, and Kymberley, all pitched in and rented a 6-person boat for a weekend to take an almighty journey out into a distant land that none of us knew if we’d safely survive: the Norfolk Broads. (For those outside of the UK, the Norfolk Broads is the sleepiest bit of water on the planet. Think old man sleeping on a porch on a sunny Sunday afternoon, and that’s the sort of water you get.)
Our vessel was called The Crown of Light 2, that we booked from Herbert Woods (Tell them I recommended them to you and you get 5% off!). Let me tell you head of time. Booking a boat with your friends is one of the most relaxing trips you could possibly imagine. Screw party holidays to Ibiza, or wherever the kids are going these days. The Norfolk Broads is where it’s at!
First thing you learn when you actually get on the boat is that a boat is incredibly difficult to steer. In a car, you turn your steering wheel right, and the car moves right. You turn your steering wheel left, and most times, the car tends to turn left. On a boat, you’re moving the direction of propulsion on the back of the boat. That’s just a bit of a wordy way of saying it’s like you’re sat at the front of a very looooong shopping trolly, and you can only move the back of the long trolly, and the shopping trolly doesn’t turn easily, and it also turns about 6 seconds after you change the controls. Oh look at that, I made it even wordier.
The good news is, the boats move very slowly. By car standards, it’s like they don’t even move. The speed limit on most sections of the Norfolk Broads ranges between 2 and 6 miles per hour, which is a walking pace. It’s, and I mean this, the sleepiest form of transport you could possible imagine. That means that a trip to the Norfolk Broads becomes less about this big adventure where you’re worried about manning some complicated vessel, it becomes more about breathing everything in, slowing down for a few days, and appreciating the friends and environment you have around you.
The first day, it pissed it down with rain, and we decided to head from Herbert Woods’ dock to Thurne Mill, just a short half an hour trip away so we could all get settled. When we arrived, we fast learned that controlling a boat in cramped conditions is the trickiest thing you’ll actually do while on the Broads. We managed to get ourselves trapped sideways and needed to shimmy out! We got the hang of it in time, but at one point we had two boat owners shouting helpful but opposing directions at us from each side of the water.
Once you’re in position, somebody, or in our case, two people need to jump out and tie the boat down. It’s important that you don’t tie it too tight, since the tides go up and down and can drag your boat up the wall if there isn’t enough slack! The first few times you moor a boat, you’ll make an awful mess of the knots, but in time you end up finding a routine and a method that works really fast and well. Then, you switch the boat off, take a look around, and question every decision you’ve made as a group twice. “Are we sure we can just moor here?” “does this look tight enough to you?” “Can you hear dripping water?” “Has anybody seen my bag with the yellow handle?”
It takes about a day, or 3 moorings, to get to grips with everything. Once you do, you develop this lovely sense of pride as you work as a team, all taking individual roles. We all swapped around doing different things so we could experience everything. I expected to get a real kick out of driving the actual boat, but I found that my two favourite things were standing on the front tipping my cowboy hat at people, and navigating. I had a knack for figuring out where we were on the map quickly and how far we needed to go before turning off into a new route.
Actually driving the boat is simple. You have a steering wheel, and a throttle. The throttle goes forward and back, and the steering wheel goes side to side. As I said before, everything has a delay, so you catch yourself making a gentle S shape down the water as you correct your path every 10 seconds or so.
On the water, everybody is extremely friendly. In the busy sections, you pass by another boat every few minutes or so, in the quieter bits, it might be every hour, and everybody gives you a polite little wave. Even the homeowners sat on the banks looking lazily back at you smile and wave. Being on the water is one of the friendliest places you can possible be, and from experience, it doesn’t matter what water you’re on.
We went to Ludham bridge, a lovely place to stop by at a pub a little northeast of the mooring, then we went back on ourselves in the afternoon and made our way over to Horning, stopping at a mooring spot on the south side right at Ferry Marina, where we went on foot to get dinner. There was this immense sense of a summer evening, and this was very early May. Everybody was happy and relaxed, it seemed like nobody had anywhere they needed to be. I remember thinking that this would be a lovely place to retire.
The next day we continued on the River Bure, passing Wroxham Broad and reaching the busy little town of Hoveton. We stopped just after the bridge, finally finding a free space. We settled up for the afternoon, and lounged about the town while Pinch painted the area, Jon cooked an amazing steak dinner for us all, and Kymberley and I took turns reading, sleeping and taking photos.
I’m writing this a few months after the trip, it’s been a while now, but this feels like it was one of those beautiful summer memories I’ll always look fondly back at. It was the first trip falling in love with Kymberley, the very start of our relationship. All the memories I have are tinted with this foggy vinyl-gold warmness, probably helped by the fact that I was carrying a 35mm film camera at the time. It feels like a gift to have this memory as something the four of us get to share.
The furthest we travelled was to Coltishall. We moored a short walk away and had dinner at the Rising Sun, sat along the water’s edge. That night, we sat in the boat singing campfire songs by fairy light, Finally, on our last full day, we high-tailed it back, taking one final detour at an important place for Pinch, How Hill, and we walked around in this beautiful bluebell forest.
As we left How Hill, Kymberley and I happily untied the boat from it’s mooring points, now a well oiled machine of a team, and waited for Jon to call to us that we could hop on. But alas, that wasn’t the call we heard. The boat engine wouldn’t start, and we’d already started floating away, the boat now at a 90 degree angle fighting against the flow of the water. We stood on land, holding the boat down so it wouldn’t float away, while Jon and Pinch troubleshooted, quickly phoning up the emergency helpline and getting assistance to get us out of the pickle.
Luckily enough, they managed to get it fixed and working, but for 5 long minutes of our wonderful trip, I think we all thought we’d got stuck and lost the boat! What an awful end to a holiday that would have been, floating downstream at a leisurely pace watching the wildlife, while someone with a nicer boat comes to fix your problem!
We wrapped up the trip mooring in the Herbert Woods docks themselves the night before, meaning we could pack up in the morning and leave without having to deal with the traffic of everybody returning their boats after the bank holiday weekend.
I lack the literary ability to properly describe how much of a warm trip this was, and not in terms of temperature. This is one of those trips that wasn’t overly exciting, it didn’t involve skydiving or swimming with dangerous sea animals. But this was one of my favourite holidays. The slowness of the whole thing, the chance to actually breathe for a second and step away from everyday life for a few days. Looking back, the memory feels like a gentle, soft pillow, and that’s a hundred times better than Ibiza.