Project Troll

05/07/2026

Several users have contacted us to ask if we can put bridge monitoring Reedham and Somerleyton Bridges - we haven’t considered them before as the are theoretically able to open. With the current and ongoing situation, it might be time to reconsider.

To do this, we need an accessible and secure site for the equipment within half a mile ideally of the bridge and funding to do so. You’d like to think BA or even NR would be in the phone to us. BA.are totally aware of our existence but having made progress with them 8 years or so ago, they chose to ghost us.

Perhaps some of the toll payers could suggest it?

07/06/2026

Changes at Great Yarmouth

After some reports of confusion around the 2 bridges by the yacht station, we have been and surveyed the bridge boards and found some discrepencies. Our monitors are calibrated to bridge boards and the data available on the Broads Authority website to show heights for both bridges.

Whilst the 2 bridges are different heights, everone only cares about the lowest one and we were reporting both.

We have made a change now and only show one heigh on the app - this is shown as 'Yarmouth Yacht Station (lowest)' and is calibrated to the bridge boards before the road bridge heading downstream (ie the ones you can see from the Yacht Station).

We hope this reduces confusion and helps our users

24/10/2025

You may have seen the Norfolk Broads Navigator app being advertised on the various Norfolk Broads pages.

It purports to have real time bridge heights. Please note that Project Troll is the ONLY source of Real Time measured bridge heights on the Broads. They are not predictions or based on tide tables. As most of you know, there are so many variables in predicting water levels on tidal inland waterways that the only real answer is to actually measure it!

We are also committed to keeping our service completely free to end users, supported only by some commercial sponsorship and ‘buy us a coffee’ donations

Anybody publishing, scraping or reusing our data without permission is breaking the law.

01/04/2025

Boat owner invents 'Add on Conning Tower'

An ingenious Norfolk Broads boat owner, frustrated with rising river levels, has adapted a broads 'bathtub' to enable them to access the upper reaches of the Bure and Hickling Broad. Inventor Darren Dredger has grafted a second hand conning tower onto his broads boat nicknamed the 'BathSub'. If further trials are successful, he aims to provide a DIY kit which he thinks could sell as far away as Wroxham. Although the boat block size remains the same, Broads Authority are yet to comment if there will be an enhanced toll for the nuclear reactor that powers the craft.

20/02/2025

Potter Heigham water level has been pretty low these last few days with up to 7ft under the bridge today. Even our sensors disregarded the data for a while as it couldn't believe it!!! back to normal now though...

01/06/2024

We have had over 4.6 thousand bridge enquires in the last 30 days. Nearly 3 thousand of them at Potter Heigham - wonder how many we will get today with The Three Rivers Race happening.

Good luck to all competitors and especially the Martham Boats teams who sponsor our service at Potter.

broads.bridgeheight.com

We are moored up in Whim IV at Potter ready to watch the excitement and cheer everyone on.

18/05/2024

Apologies to everyone who uses the Project Troll for realtime bridge heights at Potter Heigham. There have been some odd readings over the past few weeks. Long story cut short but after lots of work behind the scenes looking for software bugs - there weren’t any!! In this mornings sunshine we visited the sensor to find it had taken a knock and pushed the sensor out of whack! Normal service is now resumed.

broads.bridgeheight.com

Please note that the sensor is calibrated to match the guage in the Pilots office which is slightly different to the bridge boards and considered to be the most accurate.

The data presented on this website is proprietary and is protected by Copyright. As such, you may not harvest, store, sell, transmit, re-produce or re-present it without prior written consent of the data owner. Should you wish to seek such permission please email [email protected] with your...

05/09/2023

For anyone not yet convinced of the value of Project Troll (or online availability of Broads bridge data in general) - here you go.....

These are number of times someone has enquired about a bridge height and the number of users

16/08/2023

Apologies to users who have tried to access Potter Heigham bridge height over the last few days - we had a comms issue which is now fixed. We have also recalibrated it to match the guage in the pilots office at Potter - any problems, drop us a message

broads.bridgeheight.com

07/03/2023

This weeks' weather is just a blip, we're sure of it! Warmer times are on their way and we thought we should hurry up the winter upgrades to our monitoring stations in Great Yarmouth - which are now complete. We hope you find the data posted on bridgeheight.com useful. If you do, tell your friends!

And remember, we're still on the lookout for sponsors, be they individuals or organisations, to help roll-out the Project Troll network to other Broads locations and make the rivers safer. We're ready to go when you are.

Happy boating
The Troll team