“We don’t know how lucky we are, do we?”

“I’ve lived here for ten years and only ever driven past the Broads.”

These are just a couple of snippets of conversations I’ve had in the past couple of days when talking about what we did at the weekend.

I spent most of it on the Broads – either at Wroxham or Salhouse.

It was a glorious day on Saturday when we hired a boat – we were celebrating a family milestone (happy birthday, Ant).

The sun was shining, the picnic was packed.

And as we motored our way along to Horning and people tooted their horns and gave us a wave, it really brought home (literally) how lucky Norwich is to have something like the Broads so close by.

By and large many of us don’t make the most of it – and up until this year I was definitely in that category too.

Now I’m not saying every family in Norwich needs to be hiring a cruiser every other weekend.

In fact when we went back to Salhouse on Sunday it was in an inflatable kayak.

And this is a much cheaper option when it comes to exploring Norfolk’s waterways.

Not wanting to be one of the people that makes headlines for being a nuisance on the Broads, we always wear life jackets and stay pretty close to the banks.

That way, if we did get into any bother we could sort it out ourselves and just wade back to shore.

For those who don’t fancy going on the water having a wander along the footpaths presents some amazing wildlife to spot.

Over the weekend we saw handfuls of herrings, a kingfisher (maybe two, it was flying quite fast), and more fish than you can shake a stick at.

So if you’ve never ventured to the Broads it’s well worth a trip.

It’s absolutely beautiful, a very reasonable day out and if you’re peckish there’s great pubs too.