The Norfolk Broads: everyone’s seen the usual-type shots, wide expanses of lapis lazuli water, dotted with white-sailed yachts. Well, I visited the Broads village of Ranworth this past Tuesday (3rd October), and took some different shots. Enjoy.
Southern Comfort, a Mississippi try-to-be , takes visitors on a leisurely tour of the Ranworth complex of broads. Here I watched from a nearby nature reserve as it passed
Moss- and lichen-covered trees are everywhere at Ranworth nature reserve. (almost enough to satisfy my quest for fungi)
All summer chasing dragonflies and finally one stops and poses. But this female keeled skimmer (I think that’s what it is) was so well camouflaged I almost didn’t see it
A taste of the woodland at Ranworth, a wetland carr; thankfully with a raised wooden walkway
Ranworth reflections: a myriad of channels serve as reminder of bygone days when the wherries pulled in here to unload coal and maybe raw wool ready for spinning, and, to load up with reeds, grain and bricks.
St Helens church at Ranworth: turned inside-out
The rood screen at St Helen’s is the most ornate and complete in East Anglia, here seen is just a small part of it.
St Michael the Dragon-slayer . . . just one of the many panels that make up the lower register of St Helen’s rood screen. Other panels feature the 12 apostles, the 3 Marys, St Margaret, St Etheldreda, St Agnes, St John the Baptist, St Barbara, St Felix (the first East Anglian bishop), St Stephen the martyr, St Thomas of Canterbury, St Lawrence the martyr, and that other dragon-slayer, St George. Completed during C15th.
And to complete the different take on this small Broad’s village . . . the church against a glorious (and most unusual) deep blue sky.
crispina kemp 
I believe the window depicting St. Michael and the picture of the kneed skimmer is you signalling to your fellow Illuminati members that Skimaskall is soon to rise again.
And is that a flooded fence or a lock in the first picture?
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It’s neither a fence nor a lock, it’s something to do with the conservation centre (I was standing on it’s ‘stage”. And I did chose that particular panel of the rood screen because of Skimaskall, tis true. It all fitted together rather well with the dragonfly. But no subliminal messages, alas.
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I quite like the first picture of the Southern Comfort. I like the view with that fencing in the foreground. St Helens church looks like a glorious photo op!! Beautiful structure and the panels you could enjoy looking at a long time. Do they have rules about using flash in there? Some places that have antiquities will only allow available light imagery so as not the expose the works to undue light.
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That first shot caught me unawares; I hadn’t been expecting to see a boat there, and all of a sudden there it was. I had heard its engine, but what else to expect on Norfolk Broads. The church also took me by surprise. I had no idea such a jewel existed. I took loads of photos of the rood screen panels; I used the St Michael for the dragon imagery. The church was unattended, except for a ‘tea-room’ signed to some place round the back of the building. It has housed in it, beneath bullet-proof glass, a ‘songbook’ that dates from C15th. Exquisite. No flash allowed on that: it’s kept covered by a cloth that has to be lifted to view. But otherwise . . . I didn’t use flash, the sun was streaming, as can be seen on the shot of that rood-screen. For me, there’s an additional buzz of having an ancestor (Michael Browne) baptised at this church in 1755. In fact, the entire route I took, from Acle through Upton, South Walsham, Ranworth. Woodbastwick to Salhouse is the reverse of the Browne family’s generational trek along the Bure Valley (they then moved towards Norwich again, this time by the Yare Valley).
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Sometimes the things that happen without plan are the most fun. Well I guess with the relative in 1755 you tripped a bit beyond memory lane! You do have wonderful old buildings in your neck of the woods.
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For someone with twin loves, of the English countryside, and of English history, this is an excellent place to live. And Norfolk, in particular, is the type of environment that seems to wrap around you as if in a loving embrace. That same can’t be said of everywhere in British Isles; though elsewhere might have grandeur, it tends to the impersonal.
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Wonderful impressions from the Broads! Haven’t been there for a long time, but will visit Horsey Gap again soon and the we go through the Broads on our way back to the coast.
Warm greetings from Cley,
Dina & co
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Ah, Cley; I’ve not been there for a while, other than to pass through on way to Wells and Stiffkey. Enjoy your visit to the Broads. It was my intention to visit as many as possible this year, but it’s nigh impossible to access some on foot. But Ranworth . . . very foot-friendly!
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