Heading north, just not very far

Our last evening in Port Pendennis treated us to a dramatic rain shower and then an even more dramatic rainbow. At least we think it is a rainbow but as it started from the military ship, who knows what it is:

The forecasts for the Land's End / Irish sea area were still grim. Here is a typical one showing the predicted wave height off Land's End at 3.3 metres which would be on the nose until we turn to run north. That is not appealing, boating is supposed to be fun after all:

So, we decided to spend a little while longer in the area and wait for things to calm down a bit. Our trip was hardly a long or difficult one:

 

Since things were pretty busy (as an example, all the mooring buoys off the town were full and the little anchorage area too), we opted to stop on the mid-river pontoon just above Turnaware Bar that had space for us. Not a bad spot on not a bad day:

The RIB was duly launched and we then exercised the legs around the Trelissick estate, more than once:

The house really isn't leaning over, it just appears to be so thanks to the strange angles of the hills it is perched on:

As always, we enjoyed the woodland walks and the compulsory stop off at the National Trust tea rooms. Returning to the boat, we got another quite distorted picture:

which, luckily, doesn't show how salty the boat is (hosepipe ban when in Falmouth remember) and how much she needs a polish:  From this angle, the boat looks a little more normal:

During the walks, we spotted a large and very ugly cruise liner anchored outside the harbour area. Marinetraffic showed it to be Regal Princess with a very strange track to get there too:

Steaming east up the channel and then back again? With high fuel prices that intrigued us, so a little bit of digging revealed that she should have visited Portland the day beforehand but cancelled thanks to protesters. Protests in Portland? Yes, they don't want the floating accommodation block that we pictured in a previous post to be sited in Portland and filled with immigrants:

The cruise liner visit that was due on the same day as a protest was called off for "passenger safety". See the Dorset echo article. Stranger and stranger this world becomes.