St Olaves
Sleepy little town on the Norfolk Broads. We were on a boating holiday and this was our stopping place for the night. The boat also needed the loos pumping out - vile job, but some bugger's got to do it, and there were some of said buggers in this town. Moored up for the night outside the pub, had good grub and drink and returned to the boat to sleep. Or try to. St Olaves is on part of the waterway where the north and south Broads meet, and is very tidal. The boat spent all night sloshing from side to side and hammering into the mooring. At 5.30am (the worst kind of 5.30), having finally got to sleep around 4, I was awoken by a tapping and odd croaking noise. I pulled the curtain aside to be faced with: a duck. Bastard Mallard staring in through the window wondering why we hadn't woken up and fed him yet. Go to the back of the boat to be mobbed by every duck in Norfolk, and all their swan buddies, before trying to get aforementioned pumping done.

Well, the buggers don't take card (and in fact gave us the look of 'arrr, what be that shiny thing. Plastic? What be that then?', only in a Norfolk accent). Cash point? What be that? Ok, we think, let's find a shop and see if we can get cashback. Two hours later, having wandered past a shop that put Black Books to shame (not just wasps in the window, but bees, flies, cockroaches, deathwatch beetle and a few insects that have been extinct in the UK for at least a century) we finally come across what vaguely passed for a petrol station, run by a woman older than time itself. 'Do you do cashback?' was met by a look of terror, followed by 'Err, yes, but you'll have to spend over five pounds.' Fine, we need biscuits. We grabbed biscuits and jam to a total of £5.70, and watched her ring up £10 on the till and give me £4.30 change....

'Screw this' we thought, 'We'll get to the next pumping stop. If we need to crap before that, we'll do it over the side....' On our way back at the end of our holiday, we broke the 'no motoring after dark' rule to get on to the next pub up river, and St Olaves is now not said in this house without being followed with a shudder.

Length? The Broads have at least 120 navigable miles of waterway. And I just discovered St Olaves is a village. Oh well, it's still a grot-hole.
(Mrs Trellis GIN, Thu 29 Oct 2009, 15:45, Reply)