Genealogy and Crown Gem 4

After spending the night on our usual Norwich C&C Site we got everything packed up and ready for later today when we'd be picking up our home for the week - Crown Gem 4.

The campsite is fairly close to Strumpshaw and I'd recently found out that the licensee back in 1841, a certain John Burton Spooner, had a daughter called Ann who married into my Southgate family. She married William and they ran The Ferry House at Stokesby. As we were unable to collect the boat until after lunch we set off to find the pub and the church in Strumpshaw in the hopes that I might find a grave or two of Spooners. As it happened the pub - The Shoulder of Mutton ...

and the church ...

were almost opposite each other and I got very excited when I found the graves for both John Burton Spooner Senior and his wife Ann ...

and John Burton Spooner Junior and his wife Sarah ...

The pub had stayed with the Spooner family until 1903 being run by the respective wives after the deaths of their husbands and then another family member.

It was now time to go to Tesco and stock up with some grub for the boat and then we made our way to Stalham Staithe where we stopped for lunch. The Staithe was just around the corner from the boatyard so we drove round and Mike went to see if our boat was ready - it was! After being given instructions on how to look after the engine and how things worked on her we loaded all our gear onboard, collected our lifejackets and with Hamish happily sitting and watching everyone ...

we set off from the yard ...

It was very peaceful on the river with a yacht sailing by ...

and in no time at all we reached Gay's Staithe where we would be spending our first night ...


At this point Mike realised that he still had the RV keys and they were supposed to have been left in the yard office! We rang them and they said they really needed them just in case they needed to move the RV during the week as it was in undercover storage in a boatshed. We decided the easiest thing to do was to return them in the morning as it wasn't very far to go back. I don't think we'll be making that mistake again though! The next job was to get the bed made up and a certain little person said thank you very much I know where I'm sleeping, never mind about you two!

After a lovely supper we collapsed into bed and fought Hamish for some space!