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LAST week my wife Ann and I got away for a short holiday. We headed for our favourite part of the country, the rivers, lakes and broads of Norfolk and Suffolk — the Broads National Park.
It is a wonderful part of the world and despite — or in some cases because of — coronavirus, the watery landscape was looking as good as I have ever seen it.
The ban on boating over the lockdown has now been lifted but water plants have blossomed and in some cases motor boats are having trouble getting along without propellers being knotted in tough underwater stems.
Many birds, mammals and insects have also found the relative peace and quiet of the lockdown ideal to get down to the serious business of breeding.
Wildlife populations are looking healthy. Cranes, bitterns, otters and dragonflies are just some of the rarer beasts that took advantage of the lockdown peace.
Ann and I took an electric launch from Potter Heigham along the river Thurne. It’s a fairly green kind of boating, but not as sustainable as the many purely wind-powered sailing boats that were on the river.
We passed the Wherry Albion. This black-sailed trader has been navigating the Broads for 122 years.
It is one of just two left today of 300 commercial wherries that moved goods about the Broads.
Edwardian wherry skippers scrubbed out the holds in summer to take holidaymakers for trips. Today visitors are still helping the crew manage Albion’s vast black sail.
The Broads has always been one place where working people could try what so often is the rather expensive, not to say exclusive, pastime of sailing or boating.
As well as holiday hire boats of every shape and size, the Broads have always offered opportunities for youth groups from Girl Guides to the Woodcraft Folk to get afloat in anything from a fleet of dinghies to a huge wherry like the Albion.
Many an inner-city youngster got their first taste of boating on the Broads. I did.
Broads hire boat fleets offer everything from an inexpensive two-berth sailboat to what are sometimes rather rudely known as huge luxurious gin-palaces.
I need to declare an interest here. I was lucky enough to earn my living writing about all sorts of countryside leisure, including boating, and served on the Broads Authority, helping to run the National Park for a decade.
This summer the rush to get any kind of holiday after the lockdown has seen the Broads busier and much more crowded than I have ever known them.
Sadly, this generally welcome increase in beginner’s boat rentals has led to accidents and even unpleasant and unwelcome examples of river-rage.
However it was still good to see so many people enjoying boating of all kinds from stand-up paddle-boarding to huge power boats that would not look out of place in St Tropez.
The Broads really does offer holidays for everyone on the friendly waters — and best of all nobody was trying to slaughter the wonderful birdlife.