The first boat trip of the 365 day nature play challenge is cold and a bit miserable. The second, on the Waverly paddle steamer, is almost luxurious.
266 – The first boat trip of the year
Wednesday 9 April. Cold and windy. 12°C (but feels more like 6°C)
Well this one didn’t go too well… We’re on holiday with family near Ipswich and the weather has been lovely. All week we’ve been meaning to go on the harbour ferry from Shotley to Harwich. We want to see the container port and we haven’t done a boat trip yet this year. The diary of a big family gathering intervenes so we end up leaving it till the last day of the holiday and, as was probably inevitable, the nice weather goes away this day and it’s cloudy, windy and cold.
We go anyway. It starts really well. On the way in the car we spot some pheasants and stop to watch and film them. B is very cheery but gets less and less so as she gets colder. We were going to do the full hour long tour of the harbour but decide against and instead do a short trip over to Harwich and back. It would have been so good if the weather had been nice. I can’t believe that over three months in to the 365 day nature play challenge I still forget the importance of weather! As it was we’re too cold to spot anything much. I make a note to put off trying boats again until it’s much much warmer. It’s a shame as the boat and crew of the harbour ferry were lovely and on a better day it would have been a fabulous day out.
207 – Going to the ‘other side’ on the Waverley
Sunday 8 June. Cloudy and windy. 15°C
It’s two months on from our disastrous first boat trip and we’re trying again in style. The Waverley Paddle Steamer visits Penarth every summer and gives a once a year opportunity… to go over to the other side. For my mum and me this is really exciting. We spend lots of time looking over to Clevedon and Weston-Super-Mare but it’s a two hour journey round by road or train. For B it’s less exciting I suspect… or maybe it’s the tween eye rolling stage kicking in. She doesn’t completely get the yearning for a distant horizon but she is keen to go on a big cool boat… so we’re all happy. Early Sunday morning we head to Penarth Pier and trot down it to get on the big boat parked at the end.
It’s just over an hour’s journey. As well as exploring the boat (originally launched in the 1940’s and the last seagoing paddle steamer) we spend a lot of time working out tides and wind directions. It’s a strong westerly wind today and we’re trying to work out if it’s going to make it choppy or if the land will shelter it. We conclude it probably does. As the boat moves the strong wind changes from one side of the boat to the other and we have a lot of fun working out where it will go next and being blown.
The tides are also intriguing. We arrive an hour and a half before low tide at Clevedon and leave an hour and a half after… I don’t think there would be water enough to dock in between that time. There’s a helpful chart on Clevedon Pier showing how the moon pulls the water to make tides. We also spend quite a bit of time watching them throwing ropes on arrival and tying the ropes to pull the boat it. I’m planning a knot challenge soon so reckon this will help set it up.
Once ashore at Clevedon we set off exploring and find the Marine Lake. We spend ages working out how it’s filled (with high spring tides over 12.8 metres according to the information signs) and what happens to mud and sea creatures. We explore the green sea grass growing in the boating pond too.
We also have adventures with trees. On the way to the lake we find a wonderful climbing tree, on the way back an amazing tree that’s been blown so sideways by the wind it’s bent over in an arch.
It’s a lovely day, if occasionally chilly. We were pleased we’d remembered warm clothes. We lost B in the amusement arcade for a while but she surfaced in the end.
