Ranworth Broad is an expanse of water lying in the valley of the River Bure in Norfolk, England. Like other broads, it is believed to have been formed by the flooding of mediaeval peat workings. Joined to neighbouring Malthouse Broad by a narrow channel, it is one of the nature reserves in the care of the Norfolk Wildlife Trust.
The reserve consists of three hectares of open water, wet grassland, alder carr (wet woodland) and scrub; it has a floating visitor centre, a boardwalk and a bird observation hide. The broad is a short distance from the village of Ranworth and is overlooked by the tower of the parish church of St. Helen. A traditional reed lighter (a vessel used to transport reeds, harvested for use as thatch) called the 'Helen' now ferries visitors between Ranworth Broad and Malthouse Broad.
The poet and critic Edward Thomas spent a holiday on a houseboat on Ranworth Broad with his son and a group of friends in the summer of 1913 at the invitation of the poet and writer Eleanor Farjeon, while Thomas's wife Helen was in Switzerland.
Famous quotes containing the word broad:
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.... I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)