Plymouth to Falmouth

At Mayflower Marina, we caught up with Tim and Sheila, the owners of a Yarmouth 23 sailing yacht who have featured in this junk before (earlier blog post). They saved us digging out the folding bikes by offering a lift to the supermarket for a big top up. In Weymouth Andrew did the same, all we need to arrange now are suitable friends with cars in other critical locations. Holyhead for example – anyone want to volunteer?

Our walk around to the Hoe got stopped by a path that was closed by a big wire fence around this nice military installation (port control):

Still, we did revisit the most excellent “The Bakery” in Royal William yard (see web site).  A great spot, with great bread, pastries, good coffee and a very chilled approach (as an example, you help yourself to food and pay as you leave, telling them what you have eaten).

Plymouth is a strange mix of a grim concrete town centre, lovely views across the bay area, interesting people (the English sense of “interesting” that is) and some lovely little locations like the Barbican.  This pub kind of summarises the strange mix that is Plymouth:

Not sure why a Plymouth pub is emulating Del Boy in only fools and Horses though. Wrong location.

Tim and Sheila decided to leave Plymouth at 8am on Sunday, heading to Falmouth. We were a little slower to get going; planning an 11:30 departure to take what little stream there is in the area to the same destination.  Heading out, there were plenty of leisure sailors enjoying the sun. Our liner curse followed us but luckily we hadn’t gone into the town first to trip over all the passengers:

We do wonder what the average passenger thinks of Plymouth’s concrete soulless shopping centre. Strange cruise liner destination.

Drake’s island shows clearly the impact of various defence rationalisations over the years – some nicely boarded up buildings on show:

The Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship also had to share her anchorage with yachts but seemed much more relaxed than the Portuguese warship who radioed some poor unfortunate with “we will assume your intentions are hostile” (but  very quickly and in a thick accent that made it very hard to understand). We didn’t hear any gunfire though.

The converted Fort Picklecombe looks like a nice spot to live with wonderful views:

Out to sea, we were treated to lots of feeble pot markers again off the entrance to Falmouth harbour area. Old oil containers get new leases of life there. We continued up to the Ruan pontoon just above Smugglers Cottage – our favourite spot which has featured heavily in the last couple of years’ travels.  It was also the location for the world famous “John bares his knees” picture. Such happy memories….

Maintenance news:

Nope, none of that. The trip took 7.5 hours with little drama – no stabilisers needed, just sunscreen. Cruising can be fun, see.