A Weekend on the Broads

A Weekend of Broads

And on that note, some tit as just decided to criticise me. And guess what? I didn't deserve it. Good morning gentle reader. Today I come to you live from the Norfolk Broads, where I am currently sitting on a boat bound for Thurne. Obviously I'm no longer piloting the boat; it would be hard to do that and type at the same time, but that's precisely what I've been doing for a large part of the trip. It;'s actually quite relaxing really. The boat moves at very sedate pace, but because it's so slow to manoeuvre too, key decisions about such trifling matters like steering need to be made well in advance. It was in one such situation that a torrent of abuse was unleashed upon me. Happily, the bile was not directed at me by a member of my crew, rather it came from a git of a sailor as he weaved about in front of me. I'd mad an attempt to pass behind his stern just as the rules state, only to have him change direction and block my path. This I didn't really mind. After all, sail boats are entirely at the whim of the winds. In other words, he couldn't help but impede my progress. He came about again and blocked me once more. I had just put the boat into hard reverse to avoid hitting him once more, when he yelled out impatiently “Can't you wait.” Aside from thinking that I was under the impression that “Waiting” was exactly what I was doing, I got a little agitated. Subsequently my “Sorry” was merely a sarcastic prefix to a justification of my actions which eventually climaxed with me telling the feckless Sailor to “Fuck off”. And quite rightly too. I, after all had stuck completely to the letter of the law. Additionally I had shown no real signs of impatience (since I didn't feel impatient, it would have been difficult to look impatient). Anyway, nods of agreement about my righteousness were, after a good ten minutes of ranting, enough to placate me. None the less, whilst I always appreciate constructive criticism, I hate it when some presumptuous twat decides to level it unfairly in my direction.

Anyway, aside from that (and the small, very minor and not at all damaging accident I had on the Saturday) the trip, on the whole, has been very pleasant and highly relaxing. Excluding Friday night, I've barely drunk at all. On Saturday morning, when I woke at about 7.30am I felt a little hangovery, but that soon cleared. Unfortunately, by 2.30pm I had an absolutely terrible headache. After a quick lie down and some paracetamol, it subsided, but, by the early evening it had returned once more. Perhaps it was partly cause a by the fact that my lunch had simply consisted of half a large packet of Chilli Heatwave Dorritos. It certaily wasn't the booze. Over the course of the day I managed only a shandy, one bottle of Carlsberg Export and a couple of pints in the evening.

Some small oddities I noticed about Wroxham, the small town that's home to Roy's business empire. We tried to get some chips, but by 7pm all of the proper chip shops (and by this I'm excluding the chinese take away and the kebab shop) had closed by 7pm. Also, there only seemed to be two pubs and perilously few places to eat. There were far more restaurants within any 20 meters of Rayners Lane tan in the whole town of Wroxham (though, Unlike Rayners lane they do have a McDonald's, albeit one within the property belonging to the ubiquitous Roy. Also, Rayners lane does, admittedly have more restaurants per square meter than anywhere else within greater London). We eventually settled on a little Pizzeria, where I, obviously went for the Margherita Pizza. A trip to one of Wroxham's fine drinking establishments followed, but only for one drink. The boat, along with all the booze contained therein, beckoned. Of course given my weakened state, it would have been unwise of we to imbibe any further alcoholic beverages. Instead, I stuck to the Coke that I'd purchased from the small Nisa convenient store we'd found on the way back. Some more drinking (not, as I've already said, by me) followed by a quick lie down (I was the sole participant in that activity) then, after an episode of Peep Show (or maybe two, I'm not sure), it was time for bed.

The next morning I awoke ridiculously early. Well, ridiculously early by my standards. For some strange reason, every morning whilst on this trip I seemed to be waking up just a little after 7am. Perhaps a previously hidden sense of wanderlust was making me rise at such an ungodly hour; it certainly wasn't the bed which I actually found to be a little more comfortable than the creaky old thing I have at home which always seems to give me a backache. Regardless, one of my shipmates also seemed to be waking up at about the same time (eerily he seemed to know that I had left the land of nod as well, despite that fact that I was being almost entirely silent and completely immobile), so we set about the business of breakfast, showering (a process that required the boats engine to be turned on so as to heat up the water. Unfortunately this meant that we had to wake up our shipmate who slept up front in the main cabin). Once all of those duties had been taken care of we got the boat under way.

After lunch in a pleasant pub (which played host to a large breasted barmaid to whom I took a fancy. Obviously, being me, I did literally noting to sate my fancy, but there you go)in a place that I think was called Thurne, we headed off towards Potter Heigham, the place from which our last boating holiday of nine years ago had begun. This, as it turned out, was a terrible mistake. Last time out Potter Heighham had served simply as a starting point for the journey. Much as we had done with Stalham this time out, on outr previous trip, we had, on arrival at Potter Heigham, simply parked up the car, unloaded our gear and sailed away. If only we had simply sailed on this time around.