Gone paddling

Iwas told by a cheery couple who passed me in their boat that I appeared to be walking on water – and that’s just how it felt as I paddleboarded up a quiet backwater. I’d taken my ’van to the Broads to explore an area I’d never visited, fuelled by the BBC show, Escape to the Country.

My ‘discovery of the year’ had been enjoyment of a stand up paddleboard (SUP) which inflates – and deflates – in about five minutes and packs away neatly into its own holdall for easy storage in the ’van. Leaving my wife at home to mind the cat (no hardship as she doesn’t enjoy water activities and she does like the cat), I very quickly found that the charm of the rivers was greatest.

‘The Broads’ is an extensive linked area of lakes and rivers and five gloriously warm days in early September was not long enough to do justice to it. Arriving in the late evening near Norwich, my overnight stop was a tolerated wild camping spot at