Thirty-five Years at Norbury Junction

The first time I saw Norbury Junction was on the 3rd January 1976 from Willow Wren Kearns' hire boat "Sycamore". Approaching the junction I took this photo.

3rd January 1976

I probably took the photo because of the mud-hopper and push-tug, one of the few moving boats we'd seen all week, but in the distance you can see Bridge 38 at Norbury (admittedly it's not a very good photo - a combination of a cheap camera, very slow transparency film and poor weather!)


Last year I attempted to recreate the shot from Starcross, with the following result:

Thirty-five years later

The trees have grown (or, more to the point, are no longer kept under control) there's new signage, in the distance the bridge has lost its coat of white paint, there's still a mud-hopper!, but most obvious is the presence of large numbers of boats on the offside permanent moorings and the visitor moorings opposite, something mirrored across the whole canal system of course.