From Hickling it is a long sail down to Thurne mouth, where we regain the main stream of the Bure, and the scenery is thoroughly characteristic of East Anglia. Truly there is nothing like it elsewhere in this country. League upon league we steal along the placid waterway, between rustling sedge, flag, reed, and coarse grasses, protecting all the aquatic flowers in their season. Sleek cattle graze upon the low, fat, boundless pastures; everywhere weather-worn windmills catch the breeze, and work devoted to the perpetual service of pumping out the intersecting dykes. Beyond the marshes, undulating country swells gently to picturesque and distant woods; square church-towers peep above the trees. There are cornfields and patches of turnip surrounding the ruddy buildings of many a happy homestead. Hour after hour we silently move between margins gay with the bold purple loosestrife, the free-blossoming willow-herb, the fragrant meadow-sweet, and the dark glossy-leaved alder, which never thrives so well as when its feet are in the water, and which seems to be most strong in the sap when other trees are on the verge of decay.
The Broads connected with the upper part of the Bure are the most generally known, following each other in close succession, and having a number of villages in their neighbourhood. The trip from Yarmouth up this river is at first monotonous in the extreme, but the traveller soon gets accustomed to the Hollandish land and water. The smaller the boat for this excursion, the better the speed; the mast has to be lowered at the low, modest bridges, and to meet this requirement the so-called wherries and the una-rigged boats are provided with special appliances. Very soothing it is, when the breeze is merry, to loll upon the cushions aft, gaze up at the heavens, and list to the ripple at the bows. The shivering willows present an everlasting intermingling of moving grey and green as the slender leaves expose now the upper and now the under covering, after their kind. Water-fowl scuttle off to cover as you heave in sight. By-and-bye there will bear down upon you one of the famous East Anglian wherries, half-sister to the sailing-barges of the Medway and the Thames. Her large ruddy sails are hoisted by machinery, and as she sweeps round a bend, running free, she will seem to be dooming you to destruction. Yet she flies past, making splendid speed, and docile as a child under the management of the skipper at the helm.
One of the show-places on the Bure is St. Benet’s Abbey, to which all strangers resort. The ruins that attract attention long before the landing-place is reached are the remains of an ecclesiastical establishment of the early part of the eleventh century. It was a strong post, and the monks offered a stubborn resistance to William the Conqueror. Eventually the abbey was annexed to the bishopric of Norwich; and, inheriting the old right of the Abbot to a seat in the House of Lords, the Bishops of Norwich, who are in legal parlance Abbots of St. Benet’s-at-Holme, as well as Bishops, have a double claim to a seat on the Episcopal Bench. The river Bure was, in those old fighting days, a line of defence to the abbey on the south, and the position of the moat, which completed the isolation, may still be traced. The gateway of the abbey, which was a cruciform building with a plain round tower in the centre, stands, but it is blocked by the rubbish of a large windmill which tumbled upon it in the last century. There are other relics, and the prettiness of the place, its historical associations, and the soft turf that contrasts so agreeably with the rougher herbage of the marshes, make it a resort of picnic parties.
Walsham, Ranworth, Hoveton, Woodbastwick, Salhouse, and Wroxham Broads are a close constellation. Wroxham is a typical specimen of the larger Broads upon which regattas are held, where a large yacht may cruise, and the shores of which present diversity of woodland, private grounds, farm lands, and village life. Equally typical of the smaller lakes is Salhouse Broad. I visited it last in the late summer, the boat slipping out of Wroxham Broad through an inviting opening in the reeds. To my mind there is nothing prettier in all Norfolk than this sheltered lakelet, a watery retreat which, like many of the Broads, is private property. The reeds around its margin on one shore, which presents a series of bays within bays, are of gigantic height. They stand out of the water in thickets, lofty walls of slender growth, coped with nodding plumes and restless tassels. On the opposite shore the scenery is park-like. At the time of my visit there were a number of small yachts moored at Salhouse, and upon the weedy shore there was, at points, a striking intermixture of ash trees, alders, and the guelder rose, vieing with one another as to which could thrive best nearest the water’s edge. The guelder rose bushes were bright with their clumps of red berries, glittering and transparent like Venetian glass.
Out of this small enclosure you push through a narrow waterway into Hoveton Great Broad, a lake of quite another type, particularly Dutch-like in its surroundings. Productive arable land stretches right and left, and windmills mark the horizon all round; no point of the prospect is without its square-towered church or red-tiled houses. So shallow are many portions of Hoveton Broad, that as you sweep through the light beds of reeds, forcing the graceful growths out of your course, there are often not eighteen inches of water beneath your keel, and the Dutch flavour before mentioned is intensified by the appearance of large clumsy boats, laden high with cut reeds, to be used hereafter as fodder.
Horning Ferry, a well-known waterside resting-place, may be taken as a typical feature of village life in these parts. At a bend in the river Bure you arrive at a village with granaries, and the red-tiled cottages of a long street close to the water’s edge. There are heaps of produce on the bank, a fleet of boats-of-all-work, wherries waiting for cargoes, and a huge windmill on the low ridge behind this quaint country settlement. You sail close to the walls of the village street, and it is expected that you offer a largesse of coppers to the sunbrowned children who run along, keeping pace with the boat, and singing a hymn, as the Horning children have done from time immemorial, in praise of John Barleycorn. All the yachtsmen coming and going halt at Horning Ferry, lounge upon the smooth-shaven lawn, and enjoy the comforts of a civilised inn; for the first time, perchance, for days, in the case of men who have been roughing it in wherries or smaller boats. In the hotel parlour may be noticed a case of stuffed birds, containing excellent specimens of the beautiful summer teal, black tern, solitary fowl, and jack-snipes, and two or three rare visitants, all shot by the proprietor of the hotel. Guns, fishing-rods, hunting pictures, whips and spurs, adorning the walls, give an air of sport to the place both welcome and fitting.
THE BEACH, YARMOUTH.
The largest Broad in the north-eastern part of the district I have already nominated as Hickling, which also includes Whitely and Chapman’s Broad. Horsey Mere is, however, still further east, and it is a lovely bit of wild water, with an abundance of tall poplars around the shores, and most picturesquely reeded. By proceeding up Palling Dyke, on the trip to which I have once or twice referred, I was able to stroll across to the beach, through the sand dunes, and inhale the real odour of brine from the ocean. On the way I passed the blackened ribs of a wrecked ship protruding from the silver sand which had been drifting year by year with the kindly object of burying them out of sight. The dunes here are high embankments of sand, covered with spear-like grass. Looking east was the blue sea and its ships and steamers; west was a sunshiny land, dotted with villages and farms. Barton Broad is a detached lake of considerable size; and in an opposite direction, south-east, is the long, narrow collection of Broads—Filby, Rollesby, and Ormesby—one expanse of water, independent of the rivers and cuts which abound in every other part of the district of the Broads. This peculiar piece of water straggles along a length of three miles, and throws out queerly shaped arms both east and west.
The attractions for visitors to the Broads are sailing, and sport with rod and gun. The country is so sparsely populated that the visitor has to provide rations for himself, and is, when once upon the Broads, far away from the noise of the world. The angler who has read glowing accounts of the sport to be obtained is likely to be disappointed at the large proportion of the water which is in private hands. The Broads and rivers abound with bream and roach; and there are pike, perch, and eels. In some of the Broads the rudd, which is first-cousin to the roach, occurs in incredible quantities, and affords capital fly-fishing on summer evenings off the fringes of the reedy thickets. A wholesale system of poaching, which has not been completely stopped by the special legislation provided by the Norfolk and Suffolk Freshwater Fisheries Act of 1877, has, however, of late years inflicted much injury. In his description of the marriage of Thames and Medway, Spenser selects the Yare as having—