The Garlandstone is currently berthed at Morwellham Quay on the River Tamar estuary. She was built in 1909 a little further downstream on the now silted-up quays of Calstock, to ship ore down to the open sea and abroad. Cornwall’s mines have long since closed, and only pleasure craft venture upstream now. The contrast between the [...]
Archive for August 2007
Lost Quays 5 comments
Great White (Mouth)! 3 comments
Q. What is over 30 foot long, has a mouth 6 foot wide, weighs 7 tons, hangs around in groups of up to 20, likes rubbing its snout on 17 foot sea kayaks and is capable of jumping clean out of the water? A. The world’s second largest fish.
The End 6 comments
Well, not quite. But a week of <shock horror> good weather has allowed us to complete all of the exposed coast that hadn’t been covered yet. Until the weather broke, it was looking dicey for a while! The Land’s End peninsula was simply magnificent, some of the best sea paddling we’ve ever done. More to [...]
Try Sea Kayaking! Leave a comment
Good for you! Good for Britain!
Due South 3 comments
Heather and I are currently semi-permanent residents of a disused serpentine factory on the coast of the Lizard, Britain’s most southerly peninsula. Our prolonged stay is closely connected to the dire weather, but there are certainly worse places to be holed up in a tent. Long live the National Trust, and their lenient attitude to [...]
Love at First Sight 2 comments
Will someone please lend me (give me?) $7 000 000?
…increasing 6 to gale 8 1 comment
Unfortunately another round of atrocious weather has arrived to mess up our plans. Oh well, Fowey isn’t a bad place to be stuck, even if your tent is being blown apart. ‘Fowey’ is pronounced ‘Foy’, to confuse foreigners. It’s a narrow inlet to a steep-sided drowned river valley that is simply beautiful (we know, [...]
A Lighthouse Too Far 3 comments
Heather and I had a wonderful time yesterday participating in the Eddystone Challenge. We got to within 3km of the lighthouse before we were ‘timed out’ by the safety boat (indeed, our own personal safety boat – the event had fantastic organisation) and had to turn back. This was Heather’s longest ever continuous paddle at [...]
Platform 9 and Three-Quarters Leave a comment
The Roseland Peninsula is in Cornwall, east of Falmouth and west of Fowey. Nobody at all comes here, because nobody knows about it, it isn’t close to or on the way to anywhere, and in any case, there isn’t any particular way to get here. It is the last place in England where small boys [...]
Goodbye to All That 2 comments
There is an episode in The Simpsons where Lisa Simpson sets out to prove scientifically that her hamster is more intelligent than her brother. She wires up a jar of cookies, so that anyone who touches it is electrocuted. Her pet hamster touches the jar, and runs away never to return. Her brother Bart touches [...]
Surf City, Here We Come Leave a comment
Newquay is an aberration on the coast of North Cornwall. After endless miles of awesome scenery, it’s rather odd to find yourself in a town purely devoted to the needs of young attractive people. These, incidentally, appear to be lager, surf, sex and designer clothing, in no particular order. Newquay’s beaches are internationally famous as [...]
Halcyon Days 3 comments
Andy L has just departed, and there is drizzling rain, strong wind and five feet of surf here at Newquay today, ending a week of great settled weather. I’ve awarded myself the morning off, and am embraced by the loving folds of a sofa in the bar of the Watergate Hotel. Sooner or later they’ll [...]
Westward Ho! 2 comments
The weather has been fantastic, allowing Andy L and I to explore the coast all the way down into Cornwall. The Hartland Peninsula was fabulous, and now the Cornish scenery is simply mindblowing. I paddled this way ten years ago and remember nothing; did I paddle with my eyes shut? Only negative is that we cancelled [...]
