HEATHER

Welcome to Heather

Houseboat of character, docked in Hoveton by the River Bure on the Norfolk Broads Waterways.

Heather is cared for by a partnership of friends and family. Our aim is to preserve the distinctive style of the houseboat and enable future generations to enjoy her charms.

Explore the riverside, browse the shops and places to eat and drink ~ and much more beyond monumental Wroxham Bridge.

Andrew, Timothy and Christopher

1 August 2014

Tales of the Scottish Highland Puffer boats


Twenty years ago, BBC television broadcast the first episode of the humorous Tales of Para Handy. The series was based on the author Neil Munro's insightful yarns about the antics of the crew of a steam or 'puffer' boat called the VITAL SPARK. Puffers were local trading wherries, working around the Scottish west coast and the River Clyde, up to Glasgow. Gregor Fisher, well known as Rab C Nesbitt played the Skipper. Heavily laced with comedy, larger than life characters and sumptuous scenery, the stories are arguably unparalleled in marine literature. It is regrettable that the series, plus the surviving episodes of the Vital Spark's first footing onto the small screen over fifty years ago, have not been aired again on television. 

The adventures of the Highland 'coasting trade' hit the silver screen in 1954, when Ealing Studios produced The MAGGIE. The film is stirring and evocative ~ a light and dark comedy of errors, in the mould of Neil Munro. It is said to be based on actual events, where the old, slower paced ways of the puffers, meets high flying business of post war Britain and sparks inevitably fly! 

Chris 

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King's Head Staithe, Hoveton, pictured from Wroxham public Parish Staithe