2017-10-08 Falmouth St Mawes

Falmouth

Ages ago I booked myself onto Sea Kayaking Cornwall's incident management week, not realising this was part of the courses week following their symposium weekend. At the time of booking, I thought I can travel down on the Saturday, taking it nice and easy, stopping overnight in the van if I need to. And maybe, just maybe get a paddle in on the Sunday. Sounds like a good plan.

Unfortunately for me though, the week before the course, a colleague at work went down with a nasty bug and sure enough on the Friday,  following a week being coughed and sneezed over, I started getting a sore throat. Saturday morning came and as I didn't feel too bad (ie. would have taken a lot to stop me), I set off for Falmouth. It was not a bad journey in the end.  Just a little long.

Sunday came around and the weather looked excellent, so I decided I would trolley/walk myself down to the beach at Maenporth, half a mile away and have a paddle to Falmouth and St Mawes. It would be good warm up for the week, especially after all those hours sat travelling in the van.

At Maenporth Beach there were already lots of groups on the beach and water as part of the symposium weekend. I launched and took a look at the Ben Asdale, a trawler that was wrecked on the rocks in a huge storm on 30th December 1978. Seeing as this wreck is now nearly forty years old there is a surprising amount of her still lying on the rocks.  I then started following the coast around to Swanpool Beach where there were more symposium groups on the water and then around to Pendennis point.

Falmouth Docks were very interesting with it being a Naval Dockyard, consequently there were some very big grey ships to paddle next to. It is also the home of Pendennis Shipyard with its five or six storey superyacht (aka stink-boat) parked outside.

In the yachting marina though was one very beautiful yacht - Gloria. Once owned by Peter de Savary (a rich bloke, who led the British sailing team in its challenge for the America's Cup in 1983 - unfortunately beaten in the final by the Aussies), then by Pete Townsend of the Who. You can charter her for a cool $49,000 per week + expenses if you fancy! If only...

Then it was over to St Mawes where I stopped in the harbour at a very low tide and ate my lunch before spotting an locally made ice cream van. Yummy!

St Mawes is a very pretty place. Somewhere I could quite happily live and not work, if only I could afford the property prices.

Then it was off to St Antony's Head with it super lighthouse looking out over Falmouth Bay.

On the way back to St Mawes I did some fishing, but caught absolutely nothing. Maybe it was a good thing as I don't know what I'd have done with it, if I had caught something. I was not really in a fish for tea mood.

What a lovely paddle.

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