BBA class of September 2015 launch their boats on the 9th June

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A date for your diary: the Boat Building Academy has sent out an invitation to the next student launch on Thursday the 9th June.

This season’s crop of boats include:

  • 11ft 6in Iain Oughtred Guillemot
  • 17ft International Canoe
  • 19ft Replica of a traditional Beer Beach Boat
  • 20ft Paul Gartside daysailer Terror
  • 21ft 6in Gil Smith South-Bay Catboat

If anyone is able to get along and to send me some photos, please do! Email me at gmatkin@gmail.com . Thanks!

Working and life on the Norfolk Broads in the late 19th Century

2003-5001_3_21475_50, 7/2/05, 1:51 pm, 8C, 4628×5570 (318+737), 88%, bent 6 stops, 1/15 s, R26.1, G28.7, B73.7
1990-5037-P13/8/6, 27/4/05, 2:38 pm, 8C, 6630×3444 (725+3383), 125%, bent 6 stops, 1/15 s, R37.4, G18.7, B35.3
2003-5001_2_21472, 25/6/04, 10:30 am, 8C, 5076×3438 (858+2979), 112%, bent 6 stops, 1/15 s, R26.6, G28.4, B72.4

My pal Malcolm Woods has just found a new online collection of Victorian photographer Peter Henry Emerson’s atmospheric shots depicting the Norfolk Broads.

They’re stunning – though I can’t help that despite the dreamy tranquility they do seem to depict a hard and narrow-looking sort of life. There would be work and the struggle of getting by all week and on Saturday, of course – and then on Sunday there would other duties for many, often listening to fiery sermons in the chapel.

When novelist LP Hartley wrote: ‘The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there,’ he could so easily have been writing about these folks.

A lovely memorial to Lella, Oare

Wandering in the sunshine around the chruchyard of the charming little parish church at Oare, I noticed this particularly lovely headstone. My pal Ian Carter later filled in with some information he found on the World Wide Web – it seems Lella was a sailor and journalist named Helen Jenkins, and two links concerning her memorial and how her life was cut short can be found here and here.

The memorial tells us that ‘She gave boundlessly…stood for what is right, and was loved beyond measure.’

Here’s the view of Oare Creek from her resting place.  It seems very fitting. 

Thanks for the information, Ian!