bunn

We've decided that we're going to sell the boat after this summer (it's not cheap to run, and the engine servicing & repairs in particular are painfully pricy). I'm going to miss being able to run down to the open sea and out to the islands in the spring, I know, so I'm making the best of it while we've got it.

( Many many photos. )

Tree News

The sycamore tree that was leaning perilously over the neighbour's house (with scary rotten side to the trunk) is no more! Pp decided to put it up as a 'job available' on Mybuilder, and we immediately got a contact from a shiny new young garden and tree management company, run by two shockingly young yet highly competent people who quoted very reasonably for the tree to be removed. They had the relevant certifications & insurances, so we went for it, and wow, did they work. They were here from about 10 am to after 8 and hung themselves by ropes from the tree with chainsaws to take bits off. Then they chipped it all, and took away the logs!

I asked their advice about the elm tree next to the sycamore, and was delighted to hear that they thought it was in fine fettle and needed no work done. You don't see that many elms about, so I really wanted to keep it (assuming it wasn't also a terrible peril to the neighbour's roof). It looks very fine now you can properly see the shape of it - though you can see it was sort of leaning away from the sycamore a bit. With luck, it will just fill out a bit on that side. There is the ever-present risk of Dutch Elm disease, but I am hoping that the wild sea-winds may be enough to keep the beetles at bay. Certainly there's no sign of DED yet.

I asked the tree guys to leave the big rotten stump of the sycamore in place, hoping it will continue to rot and perhaps become hollow and enliven the local environment. It may shoot from the left over bits, but if it does, it's now small enough that I can easily manage the shoots with loppers.

( just bullet point diary notes really )

It was Pp's birthday today, so since the forecast was clear and windless, we went out in the boat.

We had lunch in the shelter of Skokholm island, with puffins and guillemots whirring busily past us. There were no seals today, but there were bluebells and whatever that small white flower is that you can just see forming masses among the grass in the photo below.

Then, since the weather was good, we went on past the next island, Skomer, whose massive cliffs were surprisingly busy with visiting tourists, as well as seabirds. That meant we went into St Bride's Bay, the wide bay between Skomer island and the massive point of westward-thrusting rock that holds St Davids, the smallest city in Britain. The oil tankers often hang about in St Brides Bay, and there was one lurking there today, waiting for a space at the oil terminal, I assume.

However, the wind from the north was getting up, so we decided that was enough exploring for now, and headed back south through Jack Sound. Jack Sound has a bit of a reputation as a difficult passage, but the tide was flowing straight south, so we thought we'd risk it, and in the end it was a smoother route than the seas around Skomer had been.

Here's one of the tourist boats going out from St Martin's Haven to Skomer behind us, as we came out of Jack Sound and started heading home.

We've volunteered to support our friends the Celtic Longboat rowers again - last year we went to Saundersfoot with them. They have a team of nine, with four rowing and one coxing at any time, the rest of them ride in the RIB with us until it's time to swap over.

This year we have ambitions to go north, out to Grassholm, the island of the gannets, which depending on who you ask, is 6, 8, or 11 miles off the coast, and then across St Brides Bay to Solva. If it happens (and it will be very weather dependent!) it will be mid-August when we try it. At present, we are just doing a bit of training in the estuary, including swapping boats, towing the Celtic, and so on.

I feel like I've fallen enough behind posting that I'm just going to type random things that come to mind.

It poured with rain today, but I walked to Pembroke with Theo anyway, and went to a coffee shop.

( Read more... )

What else have I been doing? I've kayaked across the Cleddau river to swim on the other side a few times, though this summer is cooler and wetter than last, so there's been less kayaking in general.

I took Pp and Theo for a wander along Lindsway Bay to peer at the lighthouse we briefly considered buying when we were moving to Pembrokeshire, and concluded that as we had suspected, buying it would have been a terrible mistake. Another mistake was that days' assumption that the forecast cloud would keep Pp cool enough to go walking: it was waaaay too hot for him.

I went down to Devon to visit my mother at the end of July: I've not been able to go for a while because Rosie wasn't up to the journey and I was worried about leaving her.

It was a good visit, even though it rained a lot there too. We drove over to Widemouth Bay on the North coast and wandered around on a Cornish beach for a change, pottered around Tavistock, and I took Theo up for a walk on the moors. Baked a banana bread with bonus kiwi fruit in it.

I voted in the election, despite my polling card arriving about a week too late.

Oh, and we did take the Celtic Longboat rowers for a Long Row, though not for the planned Fishguard to Pwllheli row, since they weren't able to get a support yacht, which was required for that race. Instead they rowed from Gelliswick to Saundersfoot, which is still a respectable distance and further than we'd been before in the RIB.

It was a bit stressful in the harbour in Saundersfoot, which is a drying harbour with a lot of mud at low tide and not a lot of room to manoever a very long and fragile thing that is the Celtic Longboat. We got our propeller caught on a buoy rope. But it was fine, and probably a good experience of things going a bit wrong.

We'd completely forgotten that Mondays come after Sundays, which was important, because the Castlemartin Firing range is closed on Sundays, but not on Mondays, and we had to come home in the RIB on Monday. So we ended up going a couple miles out to sea to avoid it, which was the furthest we've been out to sea. We probably need a better radio with more range to do that again.

Someone I know via a swimming group is also a rower in a Celtic Longboat team who was planning to take part in the Cardigan Bay Challenge, a row across from the south pointy bit of Wales (Fishguard, to be precise) to the north pointy bit (Pwllheli). To do this, each rowing team needs a support yacht and a RIB capable of carrying the rowing team and towing the longboat if necessary. We have a suitable RIB, so we volunteered to help out.

Sadly, my friend then had to drop out due to an injury, but we thought it sounded like an interesting challenge so we volunteered to take part anyway. Yesterday we met up with the crew, and also another more experienced crew who had volunteered to help the novices practice, for a session in the relatively safe waters of the middle Cleddau, swapping teams on and off the Celtic and the RIB. We had fun and nobody fell in, so I'm counting that a win.

It will be something like a 10-hour row, with two teams swapping at one, or maybe one-and-a-half hour intervals, setting off at 6pm and rowing overnight. (Nobody seems to be quite sure why it's an overnight row, which does seem like it's complicating matters. But this is as the small gods of Welsh Rowing have dictated.)

I am not sure this is actually going to happen. It's extremely weather-dependent (only happens if the winds forecast are force 3 or less), and also our team currently seems to have a bit of a case of Schroedinger's Yacht, and we can't do the journey without the yacht.

We shall see. I have asked a local friend if she would dogsit for me if necessary for that weekend: she has had a whole series of adopted sighthounds through the years, and Rosie knows her, so hopefully that will work if everything else does come together. In the meanwhile, we are off for another practice next week, this time down at Dale, which will allow us, and more importantly the rowers, to train on the sea.

Went for a brief swim from the boat yesterday - upstream, because it was windy out to sea, so photo is from the middle Cleddau, still a wide tidal river, but a good way upstream. Getting out was easy. Getting back in was hard. I had to shin up the outboard motor by standing on the... fin things in the end.

Lesson from this is that getting into a boat even when there's someone on board to pull you is really difficult (at least now I am old and fat), and we should have a ladder in case of accidental de-boating, because even standing on the outboard, I didn't really have the upper body strength to pull myself back in fully (and anyway, you might not always be in a situation where turning the engine off was a comfortable option).

We had picked a spot where we could moor to a buoy to experiment and I was pretty sure I could swim to the bank behind us if worst came to worst. Also I have this very robust inflatable bag/buoy that has a waist strap, which usually I use so I don't need to leave my wallet phone and car keys behind me on the beach, but is also generally good and visible and also gives me something to rest on if for any reason I had to swim further than expected. Yes, I am a bit hyper-careful!

1. Developed an excellent technique for getting medication into Theo's giant floppy ears. For some reason, it's fine if I put the medicine on my finger and then my finger into his ears. Ears are now sorted.

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

Entries tagged with boat

Sea & Tree.

Things done, read, grown, etc

Jack Sound

Not really a catchup post

The Celtic Longboat

Boat swim hitch

More Things in May

Profile

January 2026

Syndicate

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags