Yesterday evening we met with Mark Rainsley and had dinner with him and Heather in their local pub in Corfte Castle. We are also now taking their spare tent pegs on a sea kayak trip. Thank you.
Today started with a sunny and warm morning and the day ahead looked promising. Our plan was to leave early as possible, achieved this 9.30am, and caught the end of the ebbing tide around St Alban’s Head, stopped for lunch at Kimmeridge and continued towards Portland. There we wanted to camp on a beach close to Pensylvania Castle. We had a great paddle with following sea all the way to St Alban’s. There we met a fleet of yachts and had to do yacht dodging as some of them tried to run us over. This was only the beginning.
Once we passed the headland the wind picked up and we had a real struggle to paddle against it. We made it towards Chapman’s pool and continued, but the last five hundred metres before Kimmeridge I thought of getting out and pulling the boat behind me.
In Kimmeridge we reliazed that we had no energy to continue, both of us were also very cold. We called it a day.
Before that we had to make a hard decision of not continuing towards Portland and maybe risking some unfavourable conditions for the next few days, but will worry about that later. Now we need to get some rest and renew our energy levels. After all we have been paddling for 14 days, not living out usual routine, and every morning and evening is hard work to get started or settled.