The whole length of the River Yare is haunted by grey herons. Grey herons in the shallows, up to their knees in water, catching breakfast. Lunch – of passing frog – on the marsh. Sat in trees, or flapping slowly across the sky on a wing and a prayer. There is a heronry somewhere in the maze of twisting tidal creeks that is Surlingham Broad. In the quiet you can hear the squarking.
Grey are not the only herons available! Little and sometimes great white egrets are around in increasing numbers. And cranes are back breeding in the Broads NP after a 400 year absence.
The best explanation of the River Yare’s name to come my way, suggests it was once called the Heron Stream. Gariennus the Romans called it. The modern Welsh for heron, is garan (and it is the same word for crane as well!).
Heron River, then! I dismiss the case against! The explanation that Yare means babbling, holds no water at all. Babbling it is not! It is brown and muddy! For the properly argued case for Heron Stream see Andrew Breeze’s shart article here .
The Walsingham Way 