The Broads are a network of shallow lakes — the “broads” — linked by rivers across Norfolk and Suffolk, with around 125 miles of navigable, lock-free waterway. They have national park status and are Britain’s largest protected wetland.
They are man-made
The central fact, and one that was not established until the 1950s. Until then the Broads were assumed to be natural lakes.
Research by Joyce Lambert and colleagues showed that the basins have vertical sides and are separated by narrow unexcavated ridges — features no natural lake would have. They are flooded peat diggings.
Medieval Norfolk was one of the most densely populated and least wooded parts of England, and it needed fuel. Peat was cut on an industrial scale from around the twelfth century, and the pits — some of them enormous — were worked for two hundred years. Rising sea levels and a series of floods from the fourteenth century made the workings untenable, and they filled with water.
The whole landscape is therefore an accidental by-product of a medieval fuel industry, and it is now one of the most ecologically important places in Britain.
Boating
The main reason people go. The waterways have no locks and virtually no current, which makes them exceptionally forgiving for beginners.
- Hire cruisers — motor boats hired by the week from Wroxham, Potter Heigham, Horning and elsewhere. No licence is required, and instruction is given at the yard.
- Sailing — the Broads have a serious traditional sailing culture, including gaff-rigged Broads cruisers and the surviving wherries, the black-sailed cargo boats once used to move goods.
- Canoes and paddleboards, increasingly.
Two things catch out hire boaters: the tides, which affect the lower reaches, and Potter Heigham bridge — a medieval arch with about six feet of clearance that has claimed a great many wheelhouses. A pilot is provided, and using him is not optional.
The wildlife
Internationally important, and the reason for the protection:
- Bitterns — a heron whose booming call carries for miles, and one of Britain’s rarest breeding birds.
- Marsh harriers, once down to a single UK pair and now recovered here.
- Swallowtail butterflies — Britain’s largest butterfly, and found nowhere else in the country. The Norfolk subspecies depends entirely on milk-parsley, which grows only in this kind of fen.
- Otters, water voles and Chinese water deer.
- Around a quarter of Britain’s rarest species are found here.
The problems
The Broads are shallow, and shallow water is fragile. Nutrient run-off from surrounding farmland has caused algal blooms; introduced species have caused damage; and the whole system sits barely above sea level in the part of Britain most exposed to rising seas and coastal erosion.
Considerable restoration work has been done — mud pumping to remove nutrient-rich sediment, and reed and sedge cutting maintained deliberately, since the fens would otherwise scrub over and become woodland within decades.
The status
The Broads are usually listed with the national parks and have equivalent protection, but are technically governed by their own authority under separate legislation, because navigation had to be managed alongside conservation. It is a distinction only administrators care about, and everyone else counts them as a national park.