After Southwold we had a very long sail, avoiding sand banks, to Burnham on Crouch and then to Queenborough where we had a party - cheese and pineapple on sticks and stuff like that.
Last night party
We invited the lone sailor from our next door boat, an Austrian naval engineer who was stuck in Queenborough waiting for parts for his engine.
This is a very romanticised sunset view across the water at Queenborough, it kind of hides the power stations and cranes.....
The trip up the Thames started off very hotly and boringly, until we started coming to places anyone would recognise, like the Dome..
The owner of the sailing school joined us in dock at London to celebrate the END. This is us in team outfits at the END.......
and the very next morning, we stepped off the boat and said goodbye to the last three months of another world.
I am writing this back home in Paris. More on that later.
This is the Humber - not the prettiest river, but wide and busy. We were spat out of the marina into a fast flowing tide and by the time we got to the river mouth, a thick pea soup fog had hidden everything from view. I was in bed at the time being thrown around the fore cabin as we were bouncing around so much on choppy seas. When I came up to do my watch, you could see about 10 metres in front of the boat. We did a long night time passage from Hull to Lowestoft, arriving in mid afternoon in bright sunshine.
From Lowestoft we did a very short hop down the coast to Southwold, a seaside town stuck in a time warp. It's a very upmarket seaside town, with the classiest pier I have ever seen and beach huts which cost 22 grand to buy.
This is the river Blyth where we are moored for the night, it's surrounded by misty marshland, and fortunately we are moored right outside the pub......
These are the very expensive beach huts on the front at Southwold.
This is Southwold in the mist.
I shall speak really quietly now, because it is only 4 days until my adventure comes to an end. We sail back into London on Friday..... at least I will be very happy to see Mr L again.
We are now in Hull. The tidal flow up and down the Humber river is pretty impressive, at one point the boat speed was less than 1 knot but our speed over the ground was nearly 5 knots - that's a super speedy tide.
It was a long journey down here from Hartlepool, via Whitby where we stopped for fish and chips. The fish and chip café had won an award for 'Best Young Fish Frier of the Year' - what a recommendation.
This is us parked on the fish quay at Whitby.
We walked up the 199 steps to the top of the hill where the abbey is, but we were a bit late to get into the abbey. On our way to Whitby, we picked up a balloon which was floating in the sea - a Bob the Builder balloon, which has been spooking us ever since in the middle of the night by bobbing around on the side of the boat. I think Bob will have to be deflated.....
The Humber is an impressive river, very wide, industrial and brown. The marina here is lovely. We're heading off later today towards Great Yarmouth or Lowestoft - it'll be a long journey, with thunderstorms forecast.......
These are the bridges at Berwick upon Tweed, just by the border between Scotland and England.
We had the most incredible day's sailing down from Edinburgh, with force 7 and 8 winds all day and we reached a top speed of 12 knots, which believe me, is going some. It was exhilerating. I got back to Edinburgh from Exeter last Friday and met up with a rather glum boat at Port Edgar in Queensferry. They'd had a miserable day sailing from Arbroath and were feeling slightly fraught. So we went for a slap up Indian meal and felt much better for it. (My Grandma is doing OK - she was revelling in all the visitors she was getting in hospital!)
I had a quick stroll around the ramparts at Berwick (funnily enough I don't think they were built to keep the Scots out) before we set off for Blythe. This was an industrial area with lots of wind turbines around the harbour and we had another stonking sail in slightly lighter winds than the day before, but only slightly. We still averaged over 6 knots. The marina at Blyth has showers on a converted lightship which was quite funky.
A short hop then to Newcastle, up the murky Tyne, through the entrance between North and South Shields.
Entrance to the Tyne.
We moored up right bang in the centre of Newcastle near the Millenium bridge. It was a fantastic place to park up and just look at this brilliant photo of us (in the far right hand side of the photo) with the Millenium bridge reflecting in the river.
I spent a year in Newcastle as a postgrad student about 12 years ago and the quayside area has changed so much I hardly recognised it. I would never have thought, 12 years ago, that the next time I came to Newcastle it would be by yacht.......
We are now in Hartlepool marina - ah, the glamour........
I'm sitting in a railway station, got a ticket for my destination, my suitcase and guitar in hand and every stop is neatly planned........
OK, no guitar but everything else is about right. Having spent the best part of 7 weeks sailing from the south coast of England up to the North coast of Scotland, I am now heading back again on the train and it will take only 12 hours in total.
My grandma is poorly, so I'm hot footing it down to Exeter to see her while she still knows who I am. It's not been a good summer for elderly relatives.
I got the bus from a friendly little place called Whitehills this morning and I'm now in Aberdeen railway station waiting for the train to Edinburgh. We sailed from the Shetland Islands down to the mainland in one go - over 150 miles which took from 9am Saturday morning to 1pm Sunday afternoon. We had beautiful clear warm weather and the moon was shining brightly.
Back soon.
It’s been a long time. The Western and Northern isles of Scotland do not have many marinas with shore power and we’ve spent most nights anchored in remote little bays with only seals and skuas for company. I’m still here, so is the boat – where is here? Scallaway in the Shetlands today. This is a long way from anywhere, it took a day and a night to get here and we didn’t see another ship on the way. The sailing here was wonderful, a gentle swell to give us little bursts of speed, a spectacular sunset, a bright moon and a warm sunrise.
Since Skye, all that time ago, we have been to the outer Hebrides and to the Orkneys. From the sea, the outer Hebrides don’t look as spectacular as the Western Isles – but they are a truly magical place. They really are as old as the hills, approximately 3000 million years old. We hired a car for the day in Stornaway and went to Callinish, a kind of Stone Henge lookalike but a thousand times better. You can actually walk around the standing stones and touch and hug them!
As for beaches, I reckon Uig, on Lewis, is probably the most stunning beach I have ever seen. It is an endless expanse of the most golden sand ever, with the bluest-greenest sea and not a soul in sight.
Then back to the mainland, to Loch Eribol – a place out of a story book. Dramatic cliffs and mountains with a glassy smooth water surface. We anchored near a fish farm and a local fisherman gave us a lobster. It didn’t scream when dunked in a pan of boiling water.
Then onto Stromness in the Orkneys. The most notable thing I can say about the town of Stromness is that the marina has shore power, so I finally managed to charge up my computer. We had a little sail around Scapa Flow, famous during the war when the surrendered German warships sank themselves rather than be handed over to the allies. Churchill had some of the entrances to Scapa Flow blocked up and the tides are now totally unpredictable.
We visited the 5000 year old village of Scara Brae, uncovered by a violent storm at the beginning of the 20th century. It was packed with American tourists who had arrived that day in Kirkwall (the capital) on a cruise ship. We had a peek at another standing stone circle, Brogar, which has also been there for more than 3000 years.
Reeling with ancient history, we set sail yesterday for Shetland and now we are here.
I think my sailing blog is a series of ‘went there, did that’ kind of entries. The next entry will be more about what life is like at the moment – if I can focus my mind enough to get reflective........
This entry is from ages ago and I'll get things up to date in the next day or so, but in the meantime, here is what happened over ten days ago.......
We collected our new skipper and a new crew member in Oban, the former a retired bank manager and the latter a retired vicar..... material and spiritual needs catered for, we set off for an anchorage for the night and learned all about why the Anglican church allows the clergy to marry but the Catholic church does not (it’s a long story which I don’t remember in detail but involves Martin Luther and St Hilda of Whitby.....)
We anchored outside of Tobermorey, sang the womble song and then set off for Rhum, Eigg and Muck.
Tobermorey
We have had the best possible weather – plenty of wind in the right direction, bright sunshine and puffy clouds to add interest to the mountain scenery.
Rhum
We are now making our way around Skye, seeing the Cuillin Hills from various angles as we go round the coast. They are stunning.
Cuillin hills on Skye
We spent one night in Loch Scavaig, a place renowned for low flying sheep.... apparently they lose their grip off the mountain side and end up in the loch. We had to put two anchors down as the Loch has a muddy bottom and we were drifting across towards the rocky shore with just one anchor. The vicar is a member of Gloucester rowing club, so has been rowing us ashore from our anchorages – very handy. Last night we were in Carbost, rowed ashore to the pub by our vicar who then got into a spoon playing competition with a bolshy Frenchman..... our vicar won.
Carbost, getting into the dinghy to be rowed ashore.
We are now anchored in Loch Dunvegan on Skye, it has been 3 days since I’ve had a shower, but the sea air is very cleansing.......