Going by the numbers of articles in the Bulletin, the Walton Backwaters would be crowded with cruising dinghies on the weekend after Easter 2004 whereas the Ore would be desolate and wild. So out with the tide tables, the slip lists, weather forecasts and checklists....

A bit of history and geography

The Ore & Alde offers about 18 miles of enclosed cruising for a dinghy, including the Butley River. The two main rivers probably used to have separate mouths and hence were distinguished by a name each - a benefit which they still enjoy even though they are now really one and the same river. I doubt it is much safer than the open sea - with lee shores on every side and long fetches that can kick up a lop big enough to swamp you. It just seems easier for a single-hander. The main waterway (from the Ore Bar to Iken on the Alde) averages about 200 yards in width (ranging from 100 to 300 yards) and so it's a challenge to keep out of the mud but it can be done if you stay awake. I would say it is impossible at night or if there's a fog. The upper Iken and Butley Rivers require oars or motor but the sense of exploration of narrow waters is a good substitute for the pleasure of using the wind. There are many fascinating places to get to know - the towns of Orford (keep, pubs, church, oysters) and Aldeburgh (Moot Hall, Jubilee Hall, chip shops, pubs, beach fishermen). Snape Maltings has its Concert Hall, pub, cafe, shops and interesting old quay. These places have strong connections with Benjamin Britten who some say (me included) will be as famous and popular in 200 years as Mozart is today.

The Plan

Launching is possible at Orford and also at Slaughden Quay at Aldeburgh. The slip at Orford now charges an outrageous £10 to launch and the council carpark is £4 a day. I refuse the 'Post the fee in the letterbox if there is no-one in the office' tack - what about my receipt? Slaughden Quay is still £5, if they bother to collect, and parking is free and plentiful. But passage planning comes first!

I opted to launch at Orford on the afternoon of Friday April 16th, to take the evening tide and the Ore and Alde up to Aldeburgh and possibly beyond, continuing on the Alde up to Snape on the morning flood after a night's sleep moored up. Next day would see a return downriver on the Saturday morning ebb, passing Orford, and on to the Butley River, taking the evening flood to its navigable head to find a spot to moor or anchor for my second night, getting back to Orford on Sunday. I had the additional plan of looking at the Ore Mouth at low slack at Sunday teatime, if all went well, before returning upriver to Orford by sunset the same day. The last part of the plan dictated the more expensive launch at Orford as I had only a couple of hours after the slack to return north before sunset. Also my late 2.30pm start from Lowestoft on Friday meant that I couldn't get to Aldeburgh in time to find the slipway with any water over it. HW was at 1130 BST at Slaughden on Friday and the slip is +/- 3hrs, whereas Orford is +/- 5 hrs (so allowing them to double the price?).

Orford to Aldeburgh

Marian is a heavy boat but launching single-handed with our new trailer, 4½ hr after HW at Orford, was easy. With a good ebb running I hung on to a spare mooring, sorting gear in the sun, waiting for the turn after LW at 1750. A marsh harrier got up on King's Marshes flapping its lazy way low over the fen only to be mobbed by a lapwing. So my mind wasn't on the job! I hate to admit it, but nearly all my transitions into or out of sail this trip were more or less a cock-up and this was no exception. Sails up, let go for'ard and... the tack haul snakes loose and Marian careers off like a wild horse downriver, ballooning her mainsail on an errant boom. Mild panic... thank goodness we weren't closer to the bank or that National Trust boat! Under control again we settle into a regular short tack routine against the steady NE breeze making 100 yards progress on every other tack.

With the breeze dying as dark approached I soon realised that I wouldn't get past Aldeburgh before sunset (8 o'clock) so fell into a sort of dreamy, lazy torpor trying to put words to the sights and sounds of this least exciting bit of the river. Oystercatchers on mass go 'Brrrrrrrr - you peeped, you peeped, you peeped, you peeped' getting louder and higher all the while. The water was like silver and molten tin; the sun a wonderful gold reddening as it became mixed with copper and sank lower to the horizon. Precious Ore indeed! The BBC World Service pumps out its signal from 8 or 9 huge masts at Halfway Reach, mostly lost in the haze. Redshanks say 'Chee-ew' with a Belfast accent in the evening but go 'Chewy, chewy, chewy' in the daytime.

The mud, gradually becoming covered as the tide rose, was indistinguishable from the water except for a light ripple on the liquid part. Indistinguishable that is, until the rudder stuck in to the shore and I came to a sluggish halt! This jolted me into more mild panic, though the tide was rising, and I anxiously pulled out with the motor having dowsed all sail. With no-one to see and with the wind lessening to a zephyr I sheepishly decided to abandon my policy of sail or oar only and puttered up Blackstakes Reach getting increasingly worried about being stuck here in the dark and having to hang overnight to anchor on a 5 knot tide. The wind came to my rescue and I set sail for the last mile and a half to Aldeburgh, still tacking into the NE breeze.

A night with Frank Dye

Mooring more or less safely accomplished off Slaughden Quay I set up the boat tent and got cooking, finally stretching out on Marian's spacious floor in my sleeping bag as it got dark. Reading Frank Dye's account of his voyage to Iceland in 'Ocean Going Wayfarer' in these circumstances scared me half to death. Thanks to the DCA Librarian I had a troubled sleep. Every mild slap of the slight chop appeared to be a giant wave coming to crash down on me and the anchor warp became attached to a drogue! Could I do what he did? Well... not unless I improve my sail handling and steering skills quite a bit! The 0536 forecast gave SW 5-7, gale 8 later. Breakfast was a welcome relief from troubling thoughts and at 0750 I cast loose in the morning calm rowing stern first with the new flood through the moorings around Ferry Point into the Alde proper with the sun on my back. Yesterday's slight haze was still around giving the distant trees and buildings on the low horizons a muted washed-out look. The calm blue sky was streaked with cirrus and criss-crossed with the spreading con-trails of the night's traffic to Japan. Beneath all this the river was a glassy mirror, which I was just recognising was thronging with estuarine birdlife at its margin with the mud.

The lower Alde

The wind picked up a bit so, concerned about tacking into the mud, I pulled the ancient Mariner into life and motored up Short Reach around Westrow Point to where the Alde begins to get even more interesting. Cob Island (more like a very long spit sticking 100 yards out into the river) hove into view to port with its marking pole topped with a flat marquetry swan. The multitudes of confusing withies hopefully marking the channel were very much in evidence from here on. These are placed to mark the channel up to Snape and consist of any old twig or branch, usually stripped by the wind of topmarks that they probably once had, a bit like a slalom course though less regular and much more confusing. Some of the port side ones had some red on them somewhere but I only saw two green marks. Most were just plain twigs or, in some cases, whole bushes. Do I go to port, or to starboard or... where is the heck is the next one? And so on for 5 exciting miles up to Snape! The river is ½ to ¾ mile wide from Westrow Point onwards up to Iken Church with extensive areas of mudflats. Unfortunately the deep channel doesn't get any wider than 200 yards and spotting the withies is essential if you are to be certain of keeping clear of the riverbed! I don't know what liberties you can take at high tide and was very cautious to retrace my steps coming back!

Today the flats of Mansion Reach were busy with birdlife digging for a living before the rising tide covered their larder. Shelduck, black-tailed godwit, avocet, pink-footed or greylag geese, oystercatcher, redshank, great crested grebe, cormorant (in breeding colours with red gular patches and white throats), teal, lesser black-backed gull and curlew. The godwit numbered in 100s and were extraordinarily colourful in summer breeding plumage - with chestnut heads and necks. Filling up before winging their way to Iceland, a bit like Frank Dye in his Wayfarer! There was much taking off and wheeling about as I passed. The shelduck reminded me of heavy transports, C130s perhaps; curlew were galumphing into the air like short haul jets; godwit like fighter bombers leaping into the air instantly aflight and redshank were imitating the Red Arrows; all with heads down on take off with 'drooped snoods' like Concorde. Lots of 'Chewy, chewy, chewy, chewy' going on. Did the Alde inspire the naming of Britten's 'Curlew River' perhaps - a dark and disturbing church opera about a Ferryman, a Traveller, a Boy and a Madwoman first performed at Orford Church in 1964?

The upper Alde

The withies are well separated on Mansion Reach but at low tide they were easy to find. The channel turns sharply to port towards the end of the broad area of mudflats, alongside Iken Church. This sits on a low hill surrounded by trees with a few prominent pines towering above the oaks and bushes. The view is spoilt from the NE by a row of utilitarian pheasant-rearing sheds and wire compounds but, from the W, the view of Iken Church is delightful - today it was like a watercolour. From Iken to Snape the channel twists this way and that so you steer S then W then S again or NW (even E x S at one point) between the mud banks, islands and reedbeds which are all good feeding grounds for avocet and godwit. The channel in the well-named 'Troublesome Reach' is so narrow that the birds are within a few tens of yards of you before they lift off and shift to a more private restaurant. I was fortunate not to go aground on the way in to Snape (but not so lucky on the way back when the tide was higher and the channel less obvious). Finally I reached Snape Quay, having avoided taking one of the several wrong channels on the way up, and I had the option of mooring up near a handsome barge named Cygnet or of passing under the road bridge (mast down) into the basin beyond. I moored up at the quay at 1020. I believe it is free.

Return to Aldeburgh

Realising that retracing my steps whilst the tide was still rising was much safer than waiting for the ebb, I swiftly shaved and washed in The Maltings' loos and departed at 1050, missing out on the refreshments I had hoped for. The return, still on the motor, was much more difficult as the channel was less obvious in the wider expanse of undifferentiated water. The withies got lost and I used binoculars to locate them. Even so, I went badly aground before Iken Cliff because of the absence of top marks and it took a lot of pushing and shoving to get afloat again and into the right channel. The birds were gone too as the rising tide had pushed them further out. The wind was increasing. By the time I had gone past Iken and found the right way through Troublesome Reach (doing zig-zags in an apparently open expanse of water must look silly), the wind had freshened up to about a F3-4 from the SW so I decided to put up sail at the start of Long Reach and run down to Slaughden Quay. This time the rudder tangled with a withy at the same time as the main sheet tangled with the tiller and engine, so I tied up to it to sort the mess out. Once away it was a brilliant run and a fast reach to Cob Island followed by a bit of tacking up to Westrow Point and a final run up to Slaughden Quay in a still freshening breeze where I arrived at 1305. After leaving Orford the day before I didn't see another boat move off it's mooring until I passed Cob Island for the second time. The River Ore & Alde is a truly wild place.

Wind against Tide to Orford

Marian's co-owner Tim Delaney had finally got my messages and decided to join me at Aldeburgh. He brought supplies and the first of his neighbour's crabs to go with my salad which we ate dangling our legs over Slaughden Quay. The racing dinghies were out, blasting around in the F4-5 so it was clear that we would get wet with the SW wind against the ebb. He took my advice to dress in full waterproofs but, stupidly, I didn't and went dressed in the same gear as the morning! True to form our take off under a double reef at 1425 was less than elegant. I had twisted the jib and main halliards up top and it proved impossible to raise the mainsail after we had pushed off. Once this was sorted (using the motor to stay out of trouble) we could proceed.

Tim has this notion that, when tacking into wind against tide, you don't have to sail close-hauled as you are making up loads of ground on the tide and consequently you stay drier! I can't say I really noticed. After several buckets of water had gone down my neck and into my trousers I asked him 'Who needs to go to Iceland?' He replied with 'When you can be cold and wet down here?' and clearly supported my sentiment. It was an exciting battle over the shallows called 'The Horse' well named for its bucking bronco antics which was followed by a sustained hard sail up to Orford arriving at about 1700. It did seem perverse to go past my car and trailer in these conditions and, once Orford Church and Keep were in sight, we decided to give up the struggle. Again, the transition from sail to motor was spectacular. This time, as a result of a misunderstanding, I went aft to take the helm without properly dropping the sails. Marian took off like a scalded cat into the shallows minus rudder which had decided it had had enough and jumped off its pintles. Our situation was only rescued by the sudden appearance of a convenient jetty with rubber buffers on it, to which noble Tim doggedly clung whilst the mess was sorted out. I always think that one of the best parts of sailing is the arriving but after this one I'm not so sure. Recovery of the loaded boat up the slip went smoothly and The Harbourmaster was waiting for his £10 for which he couldn't even provide any wash-down facilities.

Despite a slight brightening upwind that evening, the forecast of SW 6-8 later proved to be correct on Sunday and we congratulated ourselves on a good decision. The Butley River will wait for a better day!