Enterprise on the water

Up at 6.30 this morning, I pulled out of our Perci Island mooring at Horning around 7am, revelling in the "price of the morning" - it was gloriously warm and sunny first thing.

I slowly cruised at four miles an hour past the most wonderful houses; all of them with private moorings and boat houses, most of them thatched, all of them with manicured gardens leading down to the water.

Just an hour and Salhouse Broad came into view. A beautiful enclosed basin, defined in local guides as "Norfolk's closest thing to a swamp" - by which they meant the weather is somehow warmer, the water like glass (click here to view).

Having found a mooring - harder than it seemed, as I needed to tie up stern end on - I sat back to read in the sun.

And then I saw the Aldous Ice Cream launch - a man and boy in a small dinghy with a huge ice cream cornet on the front. Moving from craft to craft, they made a fortune selling wonderful home-made ice cream cones at £1.20 apiece, a fantastic example of enterprise on the water.