Travel Tips

The Norfolk and Suffolk Broads is a unique area of water, grazing marshes, fen and woodland, and home to some of the rarest plants and creatures in the UK. It is Britain's largest protected wetland, having similar status to a national park.

My job is related to the Norfolk Broads and so I go out there about once a month (more in the summer). So I'll have quite a few pics to add.

The pic here is of a Norfolk Wherry. Wherries were the indigenous trading craft of the Broads.

The land throughout the Broads was drained by a gradual proliferation of wind-powered drainage mills which lifted water into the rivers from a lattice of marsh dykes. By the early 19th century, over a hundred mills were working.

Many Broadland mills were brick-built and are still very much in evidence, converted to other uses or simply redundant and often derelict but a haunting reminder of times past.

The Broads originated in the Middles Ages, during the 9th to 13th centuries, as shallow pits from which generations of Norfolk people dug peat for heating and cooking purposes. Roman mercenaries, Saxon settlers and Norman conquerors all took what they needed, but it was not until the Middles Ages that peat-cutting became organized.

The monks of St. Benet's acquired all the rights as well as the services of the peasants, to the peat-cutting, consequently the Abbey became very wealthy. The amount of fuel needed was massive. For example, the episcopal monastery of Norwich required 200,000 bales of peat a year and within two hundred years, nine million cubic feet of peat had been cut from the area, creating great holes and deep scars.

During the 14th century the sea level rose, the area flooded, and this natural accident formed the broads as we know them today. Forty-one shallow lakes, fed and interconnected by the rivers Bure, Yare and Waveney and their tributaries the Ant, Thurne and Chet.

There is always wildlife to see in the Norfolk Broads but there is more to see in spring and early summer. Birds are among the most conspicuous of the wildlife and year round residents include kingfishers, herons and three kinds of feral geese. There are a variety of warblers and the specialities are bearded reedling, marsh harrier and bittern.

The Broads are excellent for damselflies and dragonflies including a speciality insect of the area, the Norfolk hawker, a large species found only in East Anglia. In late spring, swallowtails are on the wing, arguably Britain's most spectacular butterfly.

In winter, the Broads continue to offer plenty of wildlife, dominated by birds. There is a variety of ducks and if you're lucky you might see Bewick swans. Look out too for hen and marsh harriers and cranes.