Month: September 2009

A Southern Broads photo album

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Rockland Broad 470

Dusk at Rockland Broad. Click on this photo and the thumbnails below for much larger images

We’re just back from our honeymoon – a few days on the Southern Broads, an area of water neither of us had visited before. Even though we saw few sailing craft it’s clearly a great sailing area of largely empty rivers, often with nothing but reeds to interfere with the wind. Not that we were sailing this time, you understand – with my broken ankle, a motor cruiser from Oulton Broad turned out to be an ideal way to take a holiday.

Here are some of our snaps for your entertainment.

For more posts relating to The Broads, click here.

Yare scene Yare cows Surlingham Broad 2

Two scenes from the river Yare; the dyke leading to Surlingham Broad

Yare high water Waveney houseboat Yare mist

The Yare at high tide; a houseboat on the river Waveney; early morning on the Waveney

Rockland Broad 2 Yare windmill 2 Approaching Reedham on the Haddiscoe New Cut

Rockland Broad; windmill on the Yare; approaching Reedham on the Haddiscoe New Cut

Yare sailing Yare wherry

Sailing on the Yare; wherrry on the Yare

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Bargee, 1964

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Corbett and Barker on the canals

‘The only way you’ll get me off the canal is to fill it in!’

Masters of comedy smut Harold H Corbett and Ronnie Barker on the canals in a wonderfully silly if rather non-PC piece of nonsense from 1964 that has somehow made it onto YouTube. Some of the jokes seem a bit off today, but I seem to remember Britain in 1964 was a rather different and often less sensitive place.

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Geoffrey Robertshaw’s stunning photos from the last days of sailing ships

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GeoffreyRobertshaw 320

Geoffrey Robertshaw 5 Geoffrey Robertshaw Geoffrey Robertshaw 4

Geoffrey Robertshaw 2 Geoffrey Robertshaw 3

Geoffrey Robertshaw’s photos of ships’ crews in the the final days of cargo-carrying sailing ships. Click on any of the images for much larger photos

Over 70 years ago Geoffrey Robertshaw kept a personal log and took many remarkable photos of life on-board cargo-carrying sailing ships travelling between Australia and Falmouth.

The photographs were taken on a Kodak No. 2 Box Brownie camera but their quality is remarkable; they were issued by the National Maritime Museum Cornwall to promote a lunchtime talk given by Elvin Carter a little earlier this month at the NMMC in connection with the Farewell to Sails exhibition. However, life caught up with me a little and I apologise for failing to post them in time to publicise the event. Hopefully we’ll still be able to draw attention to the exhibition itself!

Some of Robertshaw’s diary entries are as striking as the photos. One reads:

‘Day 127, Friday June 29th 1934. At 4am this morning we are dead opposite the Lizard Point. I can plainly pick out the villages of Cadgwith, and Coverack and the dangerous Manacle rocks.

‘It may have been hell at times, we have been short of food, fresh water and cigarettes, we have had fights, we have been wet through and hungry and thoroughly worn out with continuous work. But it has been worth it.

‘I love the sea and what is more I love the old sailing ships and without doubt Cape Horn will call me back again, and I shall not refuse.’

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