There was a time of course, when no holiday on the broads was complete without a visit to Norwich.
Well not any longer.

The Fine City has turned its back on cruising visitors, concentrating instead on a cash-rush for rateable value.
It seems the new balcony-disported owners of bijou riverside apartments dont much care if its boats or ducks that navigate the Wensum, so as long as there is a convenient place to throw away their cigarette ends, and flaunt their superiority over the by-to-let soon-to-be slum, which is Riverside across the water.

And as the property selling crisis continues to bite, we can expect to see a growing water ghetto, not in Norwich itself, but in the approaches.

These are views of whats fancifully been called, The Norwich River Gateway, but in effect is the abandoned old Colemans Deal Ground, between Carrow Yacht Club and the mainline Network Rail Bridge.

This floating and sometimes sinking detritus, is the picture greeting card which awaits those few hirers and cruising yachtsmen, determined enough to push their way upriver, via a chain of impoverished waterside pubs and former boatyards, in the fond hope that the murderous Norwich binge-clubbers will deal gently with them at 3 pm in the morning.

Enjoy.

If the River Gateway isnt enough of a depressing obstacle, then there is always the tasteful vista of ABC Wharf. This must be passed by the hirer or private visitor to enter the relative (albeit only at daytime) sanctity of Norwich Yacht Station. ABC wharf is itself a useful reminder to Norwich clubbers that if you end up in the Wensum, you will very likely perish, like everything else that fails to float there.

GF will you kindly avoid referencing my typos until I have had the chance to edit them out.

It's the kind of serendipitous behaviour that threatens to leave one in a time-warp.

Do you reference the notorious Black Hole of Calcutta - a place so filthy that you could perish in your own excrement?

A somewhat extreme metaphor Bilgecrawler, but I cannot fault where you are coming from.

Some will of cause ask: who are the guilty men and women responsible for this unsightly and unhealthy scandal?

Talk to officers and members of the BA, Norwich City Council and South Norfolk District council and you'll find each will blame the other, and all will attempt to blame the riparian landlord, who in the case of the Deal Ground is, I'm given to understand, conveniently dead.

I suspect that so long as it does not ruin the Real Estate photography, none care very much where this activity exists and neither do they lose sleep if it wrecks the voyage to a place which few now care to visit.