Durlston Head near Swanage is the point where the committing cliffed section of the Purbeck coast begins, my favourite paddle! On top of the headland is Durlston Country Park. The mock castle and its grounds were the brainchild of George Burt, a partner in the very successful Mowlem stonemason company of Swanage. The quarried stone [...]
Archive for March 2007
Great Globe 1 comment
Purbeck Marble Leave a comment
An iron coast and angry waves You seem to hear them rise and fall And roar rock thwarted in their billowing caves Beneath the windy wall From The Palace of Art, Tennyson. Carved at Durlston Country Park by George Burt of Swanage.
Small Island Leave a comment
This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands, This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England Shakespeare, Richard II
Famous Last Words Leave a comment
Earlier, I counted up the scores on my Impressive Looking but Unnecessary Spreadsheet. I’ve now written up about a fifth of the trips for the book and about a third of the chapter intros. I’ve also figured out and written up the tidal gubbins for quite a few of the remaining trips. In any case … it suddenly [...]
Frogger Leave a comment
Things that I have learned this morning… In the central Solent, the west flowing ebb stream begins about 1 hour before HW Portsmouth. Around Cowes, a west flowing eddy forms an hour earlier, which is often utilised by racing yachts. Things that I already knew… Cowes is pretty much the World Capital of Sailing. On any [...]
The Race Leave a comment
I am shorebound with a lousy cold, so I’ve spent today at the keyboard. If this was supposed to help me recover, it’s been a failure because the thumping headache that I awoke with has since been multiplied tenfold. The seas around the Isle of Portland feature some of Britain’s most complex tides, forming strong [...]
Pepperpot 3 comments
Saint Catherine’s Point is the southernmost point of the Isle of Wight. It has two lighthouses. The current lighthouse is close to the water’s edge. The lighthouse is an oddly stumpy affair, as the original building was later shortened by 13 metres to avoid fog. It was opened in 1838 after an 1836 hurricane that obliterated the 345 [...]
Half a League Onwards 2 comments
Freshwater Bay is a lovely little cove on the south coast of the Isle of Wight. If you fancy a short paddle, there are a number of small stacks and caves within sight of the ice cream seller and tea shop. This is part of the Tennyson Heritage Coast and the hill behind is Ballard [...]
Isle of Slingers Leave a comment
…the singular peninsula once an island, and still called such, that stretches out like the head of a bird into the English Channel. It is connected with the mainland by a long thin neck of pebbles ‘cast up by rages of the se,’ and unparalleled in its kind in Europe. The Well-Beloved, Thomas Hardy
East is East Leave a comment
I’ve been working on the Isle of Wight sections of the book recently. Although I’ve paddled around the Island several times, there are plenty of places that I’ve just whizzed past on the tide. Hopefully I will be able get over there in the first week of my Easter hols to check out a few [...]
Low North Utsire 956 expected Gulf of Bothnia 965 1 comment
A productive day. I banged out several thousand words of the book, in the process wading through enough tidal gubbins to make my brain melt. We headed up to St Alban’s Head for some fresh air at sunset. The local weather has changed somewhat since yesterday. Getting out of the car, I was nearly knocked [...]
Chalk 1 comment
We were hoping to get down to Cornwall for a paddle this weekend, but the worsening forecast kept us at home in Dorset. Instead I went for a morning paddle locally with John Gilmour, just before the strong winds kicked in. I have never paddled close inshore along the short stretch of coast between Weymouth and [...]
Blue Havens Leave a comment
Plans were unveiled this week for the creation of Marine Conservation Zones around the UK. I can’t claim to be 100% au fait with the complex interlinked ecological, environmental, economic, social and political factors involved in the management of the marine environment and which this White Paper attempts to address. However, as far as I can [...]
Head in the Clouds 1 comment
The Old Light on Lundy Island was Britain’s highest lighthouse in the nineteenth century, being located at the highest point of the island. An unfortunate consequence of this was that it was regularly obscured from sea level by cloud and fog. The Old Light had to be abandoned and replaced by much lower lighthouses at [...]
Shoulders of Giants 2 comments
I’m glad to say that I’m not completely working in the dark on ‘South West Sea Kayaking’. Two books have already been written for the publisher along the same lines, ‘Scottish Sea Kayaking’ and ‘Welsh Sea Kayaking’. Consulting them for inspiration has saved my sanity on more than one occasion! The third of Pesda’s British [...]
Offshore Leave a comment
‘For all the celebrations it had been the object of in prose and song, the sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness…’ Joseph Conrad, The Mirror of the Sea
NP 27 2 comments
One of the trickiest things to research for the book is tidal information; times, flows, rates, directions, quirks. There are numerous sources to consult and amusingly, they don’t always correlate. I sometimes find myself forced to choose between the damned lies of one and the shameless mistruths of the other. A bigger problem is coverage. Almanacs [...]
Scouting for Boys 5 comments
Another day, another chapter drafted. The islands of Poole Harbour are privately owned and often resistant to visitors. Brownsea Island is owned by the National Trust who repel invaders who don’t arrive in the tourist boat and hand over their landing fee. Highly unusually, landing between the high and low water mark is banned on Brownsea. [...]
Furzey, Green, Round, Long 3 comments
This morning was spent exploring islands and creeks along the southern side of Poole Harbour. Stiff winds were a bit of a chore on the way out, but the surf back was pretty exhilarating! I was joined on the water by John Gilmour and Heather. Richard Parkin (editor of Paddles Magazine) also tried to join [...]
AONB Leave a comment
The tidal River Yealm is part of the South Devon AONB. There are 35 AONBs wholly in England, of which eight form part of the south west coast. According to the NAAONB, ‘An Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) is exactly what it says it is: a precious landscape whose distinctive character and natural beauty [...]
