Arthur Ransome And The Norfolk Broads

The Norfolk Broads are the setting for five of Arthur Ransome's children's books, written in the 1930s and 1940s, which still delight children of all ages today. In fact, its not uncommon to meet three generations, grandparents, parents and children -- all Ransome fans drawn to a vacation in Norfolk.

So what is it that still draws people after seventy years or more?

For many it is the dream-like experience you have when you drive into Horning and pull up in the car park,overlooking the river Bure, because you see the exact picture you've had in your mind's eye for decades.

The oak trees on the village green may be a little bigger now, but virtually nothing else has changed from Ransome's detailed description in his 1933 book, "Coot Club". There is the Swan Inn, right on the bend in the river. Stroll along the river bank, past the Swan Inn and there is the staithe exactly as pictured in the line drawing that forms the frontispiece of "The Big Six". True, some of the boating sheds have been turned into cottages for vacationers, but beyond those some of the boating sheds are still there, exactly as in Ransome's day.

You can almost feel the ghost of Arthur Ransome acting as your guide, as he proudly shows you round his beloved village. Stroll into the Post Office, behind the staithe and you can still buy copies of "The Big Six" and "Coot Club", in both hardback and paperback. In an age where books get "remaindered" almost as fast as yesterday's newspapers, that is firm testimony to the enduring nature of Ransome's uncomplicated stories of a group of small boys and one girl, in an age when conservation and care of wildlife enjoyed scant regard.

It's also a prophetic comment on current attempts to strike a balance between the demands of tourism and the delicate ecology of this unique area.

By the time he wrote "Coot Club" Ransome was a regular visitor to the broads. In the spring of 1933, he hired a cruiser for a boatyard in nearby Wroxham. Ransome's favourite time of year was spring, when he delighted in seeing the coots and other birds nesting close to the water's edge. His particular favourites were the great crested grebes, who have the habit of carrying their young on their backs, as they swim around.

It was probably seeing the coots nesting right on the waterline that gave him the idea for his most famous Norfolk book, "Coot Club". This concerns a nest of baby coots whose parents cannot get back to the nest to feed their chicks, because of the inconsiderate behaviour of a noisy party of vacationers, who have moored their boat right by the nest.

The hero of the book, Tom Gudgeon, casts the noisy boat adrift and spends the rest of the book being pursued all over the network of rivers and lakes, which make up the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads by the angry vacationers.

They finally come to a sticky end when they run their boat aground and Tom's friends have the pleasure of taking the stricken vessel in tow and collecting a bounty for its safe return.

Whilst such nail-bitting antics cannot really match the excitement and high drama of a Die Hard movie, its charm is precisely the low key reminder of a more gentle age, when the biggest crime around was to set a boat adrift, albeit for altruistic reasons.

The unchanging and gentle nature of the broads, mesh perfectly with the tone of Ransome's books, both acting as they do like a balm for the soul in this stressful age.