Fens and Broads

[AMModels]

Can you navigate from the canal system to the fens and onto the broads, what are the restrictions and has anyone done it?

[NB Willawaw]

To navigate from the normal BW canal network to the EA waters of the Fens is quite commonplace

and there is narrowboat access via Northampton.

To access the Broads would surely involve either the boat being transported over land or a coastal

passage between Yarmouth or Lowestoft and Kings Lynn ??

[AMModels]

I cant find a map showing the relative positions of the fens and broads, its just a matter of curiosity rather than anything else. I dont know how close the fens and the broads are to each other or not as the case may be.

[ChrisG]

This one clearly shows the relationship between th main waterway system and the fenland waterways, linked by the GU Northampton Arm:

 

http://www.jim-shead.com/waterways/Inland-...of-England.html

 

This one gives a clear showing of the completely unlinked Broads:

 

http://www.waterscape.com/map/

 

I know that several narrowboats have made the trip to the Broads one way or another - mostly, I suspect, on the back of a truck.

Edited February 11, 2008 by ChrisG

[Keeping Up]

Some of the rivers of the Fens start within a few hundred yards of some of the Broads rivers at source, but neither of them are navigable near there. There have occasionally been proposals for an inter-linking canal but they've never come to anything.

[carlt]

I rather hope it never happens. The Broads have such a distinct character that it would spoil it by diluting it with narrow boats.

[AMModels]

Not being a regular visitor to east anglia I would have thought that it was an easy project to connect the systems owing to the flatness of the land around there, is there much of a watershed to cross between the two?

 

I agree with what you say carl about the broads being something unique, I have to admit it was seeing the post about taking the broads cruiser from bristol to the thames that sparked my curiosity originally, I wondered if it was something that could have been done back in the days of canal mania...if there had been any industry in Norfolk I supose it might have been done.

[ChrisG]

When the canals were booming in their heyday, the Broads were too - but both systems were supplying London-bound trade largely, rather than each other. Norfolk's vast agricultural trade output was taken to Lowestoft and Yarmouth, and shipped south, while the incoming bulk trades, like coal, came from the North East - there wasn't much coming from or going to the Midlands, and what there was (factory products, perhaps) probably went to London anyway, and were shipping north again.

 

Even today, going west towards the Midlands from East Anglia is a miserable train journey, and only us lucky people who live at Felixstowe and west of there have the A14 to speed us towards Brummie - thanks to conainer lorries, whose cargo should be travelling by barge on a 1500 tonne industrial canal from the Wash westwards!

Edited February 12, 2008 by ChrisG

[carlt]

and only us lucky people who live at Felixstowe and west of there have the A14 to speed us towards Brummie -

Give us a wave as we pass!

 

I must say, though, I prefer my destination.

[ChrisG]

Indeed - but we're only going to Brummie to film at the Boat Caravan and Outdoor show!

[stort_mark]

Can you navigate from the canal system to the fens and onto the broads, what are the restrictions and has anyone done it?

 

As others have suggested, getting on to the Fens is no problem....down the Nene then across "the gap" at Denver Sluice (and boats longer than the lock at Salters Lode can sail right through it around high tide) The (still?) proposed link from MK to Bedford would make it that much easier.

 

However, getting on to the Broads is impossible. It surprises me in the good old days that they didn't make use of the Little Ouse (to Thetford) and then on to the Waveney to access the Broads.

 

Even more surprising is that the missing link between the Stort and the Cam (at Clayhithe) was never closed....just a tantalising 28 1/4 miles of 'missing canal' stops the mother of all canal rings. With the planned improvements in the Fenland Links to come in the next decade, it still surprises me that someone hasn't done a study to work out the net economic benefits or costs of actually building the London & Cambridge. There's no obstacle (in the way of housing, at least) at the Stortford end, but there certainly is at the Cambridge end. However, it would seem possible to bring a canal into the southern end of Cambridge along the existing river. What also intrigues me is that already, Essex relies heavily on water pumped from the Fens so having a canal would seem a good place to store that water temporarily