Our Sepia Saturday theme this week features an old photograph which looks down on the port of Tonsberg in Norway, and for some reason the mixture of land and sea, inlets and islands, reminded me of that part of England known as the Norfolk Broads. And therefore I turned to one of the old photograph albums kept by the inimitable Frank Fieldhouse ("Uncle Frank").
YARMOUTH HOLIDAY
JULY - AUG 1949
"We went to "Broadland" - Here and There
These snaps remind us where"
The page that particularly interested me was the one headed Wroxham Broads, which contains two photographs: "Downwards" (which just happens to be one of the suggested themes this week) and "Boating and Yacht Station". Wroxham is sometimes called "the capital of the broads", and, as far as I can tell, the scene depicted in the featured photograph has changed little over the last sixty five years. For reasons I am not quite sure of, I have never been to the Norfolk Broads although I seem to have set off on a journey there on a number of occasions and got waylaid by a country pub. One day, maybe, I will get to stand on Wroxham Bridge and look downwards. And if I decided to get in one of those little boats and sail down that broad to the open sea and then keep on going in a north-easterly direction, my next landfall would be ..... yes, you guessed it, Tonsberg in Norway.
If you decide to undertake such a journey, you could occupy yourself during the long sea voyage by going over to the SEPIA SATURDAY BLOG and following all the various links.
I had never heard of 'broads', so went off to look it up. Fascinating and beautiful areas - especially as they were actually man made way back in medieval times. They must be a wonderful place to bird watch. Thanks for this post.
ReplyDeleteMy parents took me to the Broads when I was a boy and I've not made it back yet. Everyone should go; but not all at once. Love your excuse (reason?) for not getting there so far.
ReplyDeleteAlthough we ave often been to Norfolk we never made it too the Broads.so my knowledge is limited to that in Arthur Ransome's Coot Club which I had as a from prize in 1949 (aged 12).
ReplyDeleteFor those, like me, who are wondering where those places are, Wikipedia has a map showing Wroxham:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wroxham
The route to Tonsberg in Norway. doesn't look very direct.
The Broads look interesting, so now I'll have to go look them up! A couple of the boats in the picture look like launches used to take people up & down the waterway?
ReplyDeleteWe went to the Broads a couple of times when i was young. It scared me half to death! My little sister aged about 5, fell in and almost drowned. My brother fell between two boats moored side by side and just managed to grab the rim of the deck and my father hauled him out My mother was fooling around while at the wheel, tossing some candy to our friends in another boat, managed to collide with them and and we ended up on the rocks. Had to wait for the tide to go out and then come back in again to get off the rocks. (We were near Yarmouth so the water was tidal and I was sure the boat was going to tip over when the tide went out.) My father managed to overturn the little sailing dinghy -- I think on Wroxham Broad -- fortunately it was only waist deep because he couldn't swim. To cap it all off, at one point he climbed into the dinghy we were towing, while we were still moving, with me at the wheel, and he got tangled up in some ropes and started yelling at me to stop the boat. How did I know how to stop the boat?!! All I had been doing was turning the wheel. What a soap opera !! Never again. No wonder i have anxiety attacks.
ReplyDeleteUncle Frank would have made an interesting blogger judging by the care and attention he put into his photo albums. I imagine he had a good time at the "yacht club" too.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how they came up with the name The Broads. Beautiful. Even before you know what it means somehow or another you just know that it will be a flat place. A great post.
ReplyDeleteM y father kept a similar photo album with the donkey brown pages. Dating from1944 it was full of lovely little black and white photos. Very nostalgic.
ReplyDeleteWe visited the Broads in 2012 in our way back from Scotland, and I have a photo that looks very similar to that second one from your Uncle Frank, except that mine is in colour. The area probably hasn't changed very much over the years.
ReplyDeleteAmazing how some places seem not to change much over the years. Me thinks I would like to live in a place like that.
ReplyDeleteUncle Frank's album cover is so endearing. How many of his albums do you have? I agree with Mike he would have been an interesting blogger.
ReplyDeleteTHe comments to this post are as much fun as the post this week. We have Broads here...which are names of rivers that cut through the mountains toward Tennessee, going west. First the Broad River, then the French Broad River. If anyone thinks of how women might have been called broads, just imagine the jokes about that second river!
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