Posted by Joel Silverberg on February 17, 2006 at 12:38:40 from 155.212.222.104 user joels.
In Reply to: Visiting Norfolk Broads posted by Peter Calamai on February 13, 2006 at 05:56:33:
My wife, my 12 year old daughter, and I spent a wonderful, wonderful week visiting the Norfolk Broads about a year and a half ago. We were there in early July, so what is open and available in April may well differ. We were fortunate to discover that one can rent a houseboat in the village of Horning which had two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen and a tiny outdoor porch. It was no more expensive than a B&B or hotel room, and it came with use of a 9 or 10 ft long rowing dinghy. The houseboat was permanently tied to the dock, but you could row the dinghy up and down the river whereever you wanted to go. The houseboat was visted by coots swimming in the river from dawn to dusk ... how cool is that ? We could walk or row to Horning staithe, there was a nature preserve of undeveloped broads and a small beach just across the river from the Old Ferry Inn, which took forever to drive to ... but only 15 minutes to row to (pull the dinghy up on the beach, tie it to a tree and go off exploring (... just like in S & A ) . We walked to the last remining boatyard, visited the Horning Sailing Club to watch Flash's sisters race, there was a lovely tea shop (I forget it's name) about half way to the town staithe, and there was a town swimming pool just a few blocks from the houseboat (near the Ferry Inn) that they allowed visitors to use (with a very modest daily fee) which gave my daughter something to do on the days that it rained. As near as I could tell from the Ransome books, we must have been very close to where he imagined Tom's house to be. The houseboats were rented under the names of River Lodge and Grand Lodge by a realtor named Kerry Siely at www.watersideleisure.com Her email was KSiely@aol.com . The smaller boat would sleep up to 4 people, the larger boat up to 6.
Nearby towns in the coot stories are Potter Heigham, Wroxham, and Norwich. Not so nearby, but worth a visit are Ipswich and Pin Mill. A pain to get to, but worth seeing is the wade at the naze. (You can look, but you can not walk out on the wade since it is privately owned).
I will try to post more details over the weekend. I have to go to work right now.