Photo: Berwick-Upon-Tweed's Three Bridges

Thursday 25th August
After a good lie in to catch up on lost sleep, we made the most of the warm, sunny weather for a quick trip to England and back. Berwick-Upon-Tweed is a 25 minute trip by bus just over the Scottish border. It's a town that has been fought over many times by the English and Scottish, resulting in some impressive defensive walls. We walked along the river admiring the three bridges spanning the river Tweed before wandering around the town walls and battlements and enjoying an ice cream sat in the sun.

Friday 26th August
We were up early for the bus to Edinburgh on a grey morning. The bus took nearly two hours to get there but was the best way to travel given that we had to get to Berwick to get the train and the buses and train times didn't match up! We arrived at rush hour in Edinburgh and were soon wending our way through the people on their way to work as I vaguely remembered my way around from when I lived here nearly 20 years ago.


Photo: The central atrium of the Scottish National Museum

We headed first for the National Museum of Scotland which had recently reopened and been on the Scottish news. We spent over 2 hours there but it was no way long enough - it's a beautiful museum with a big open, central atrium all the way up the middle of the floors. In side rooms are various displays with wildlife, natural world, Scottish history and many, many amazing objects from around the world. There are lots of interactive areas with touch screens and actual objects you can touch. For me it's the best museum I've even been too and even more so for being free!

Photo: Inside the Scottish National Museum

In the afternoon we visited some comedy as part of the Free Fringe Festival. The first guy, an Irishman called Ian Perth, had a packed room, with people standing round the sides. It was his last show of the festival and he was really good, he had us all laughing for most of the hour. When we left it was raining so we ducked into the venue next door as there was a show about to start. This one used photos as part of the show and was ok, a few laughs but not as good as the first. The last we choose based on it being from Yorkshire (we'd been to a comic from Colin's home country so we thought we'd try one from my home county). I wish we hadn't had bothered - it was pretty poor. One guy I felt myself cringing for, I don't think he said anything funny in his 15 minutes. It was redeemed by some excellent card tricks by another guy but when we left we did feel we'd wasted an hour! We had a wander amongst the street performers on the Royal Mile before heading back for our bus.

Photo: Fringe performers on the Royal Mile

Saturday 27th August
Colin set about investigating our broken port nav light which turned out to be a fault in the light unit itself rather than the wiring, which means we now have no port nav light unless we can get a temporary replacement from the chandlery on Monday. The broken light is a LED Lopolight which we bought for its claims of long life, so we're a little disappointed that it's broken after only 3 years of use. I did suggest using my rear light from my bike as a replacement but in seriousness we can always use the tricolour even if we're motoring.

I watched lots of divers getting their gear ready and loading it onto the dive boats berthed in front of us. Having dived extensively for 10 years through the 90's, I haven't dived now since 2001 (for lots of long and mostly boring reasons) and I had a few vague feelings of wanting to go with them. But the thought of having to sort out all my kit with its seized up inflate valves keeps putting me off. Maybe when we're somewhere warm I'll feel more motivated.

The Eyemouth lifeboat had a 'BBQ and Brass' afternoon so we felt it would be wrong not to support them - after all we may need a lifeboat's help one day (but fingers crossed we won't). We had a look around their lifeboat and sat in the 'rescue' seats where rescued passengers sit, right down in the bow of the vessel with no windows out - unsurprisingly there was a stack of sickbags placed close by!

We had a pleasant few hours eating burgers and cream teas, drinking wine and beer, listening to the band and chatting to the locals. It's a very friendly place here but the down side was we didn't win anything in the raffle!

2011: Around the UK

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Tuesday 23rd & Wednesday 24th August
On the way back from a morning trip to the supermarket for supplies, we realised the wind was blowing perfectly so we hurriedly got the boat ready, had lunch and we were off. We had to warp Emerald around the pontoons to get out of the tight berth we were in but all went well despite it being low water.

There was a swell rolling in through the harbour mouth which made progress slow with the wind on the nose until we cleared the skerries off Peterhead and could point south to Eyemouth. We had a good few hours of F4/F5 close hauled on port, the sun breaking through the clouds making it pleasantly warm. The wind continued from the south east sometimes F5, sometimes F3 but enough to keep us ploughing onwards on our course.

By 10pm the wind had died off to F2 and the forecast gave no indications of returning. The sea state was smooth but there was still a meter or so swell which with Emerald's low speed meant we were wallowing and the sails slatting which would have made it difficult to get any sleep. So, reluctantly the engine came on but at least that meant we were able to get some sleep on the off watches.

It was a dark night with partial cloud cover and no moon and very little other shipping. Colin saw a huge shooting star whizzing through the sky. We suffered our first major damage of the trip - the port side nav light had stopped working, so we had to run under tricolour instead.

A pink and orange sky announced the arrival of dawn which turned in to a bright morning and we arrived in Eyemouth about 11am. With a bit of white water breaking over the rocks lining either side of the entrance we nervously approached the harbour entrance. We'd called up the harbour master who was waiting for us on his bike and rode along the quay to direct us where to go - which turned out to be a very cosy spot rafted up to a 38ft Westerly. With a huge fishing boat chasing us in it was a nerve wracking time especially on reduced sleep. A friendly local came to help the harbour master and they performed the task of bow thruster for us by pulling us in sideways into the just big enough gap between rafted fishing boats.

The sun came out and we spent a lazy afternoon dozing in the warmth before a quick walk around the town. Eyemouth is a busy fishing harbour with an alongside pontoon for yachts. The fishing boats unload just on the harbour wall opposite to us and to start with we watched nervously as they performed 180 degree turns in the narrow channel of water next to us. After we'd seen them do it a few times we relaxed a bit and trusted that they knew what they were doing!

For those who ventured to the cold, southern place with Colin, there was a surprising connection to Eyemouth. The Biscoe Kid, a tender from the RRS John Biscoe, the predecessor to the RRS James Clark Ross, is here and used as the harbour master's launch. One of the harbour masters, Ivan, also has a connection having worked on the RRS Bransfield and travelled south on it in 1971.

2011: Around the UK

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Sunday 21st August
It was still dark when we left Wick at 5am on a still morning. I wasn't worried about getting out of the harbour like I'd been on the way in, as we'd just passed high tide. Out into the North Sea we picked up a south westerly breeze strong enough to blow us along, so it was all sails up and Victor off. The sky was covered by a blanket of flat, grey cloud with the rising sun making its presence known as a slash of glowing orange in a break in the clouds, like molten lava in the sky.

It was quite mild and as the sun got higher in the sky the clouds moved off east and it got pleasantly warm. The south westerly wind came and went; at times dropping off to F3 then increasing to F5 gusting F6. F5 was perfect to maintain a good speed, F3 wasn't ideal but we still bimbled along at around 4kts. At lunchtime the wind dropped to F2 but we kept sailing albeit at 2kts, at least I wasn't lurching about as I made lunch. Unfortunately no amount of wishing, whistling and eventually swearing at the sky brought the wind back and we reluctantly fired up Victor. What was most annoying was the weather forecast had been prefect for us and reality was nothing like what was forecast.

The sailing half of the trip was great, in contrast to a dull motoring half punctuated by some slow moving showers and the wind dying completely; but at least this flattened off the sea and we were able to see and avoid a big tree trunk floating in the Moray Firth. We also spotted, just in time to get the engine into neutral, a huge length of floating line from a pot buoy, trailing many meters from the buoy itself. We picked up some positive tide around Rattray Head to help us along and we were pleased to arrive at Peterhead harbour at 8pm arriving just after a cruise ship had left.

We're aiming for Eyemouth next, which at 100 miles will be an overnighter. The forecasts for the next few days aren't showing us anything that will give us a good blow all the way there, so it's a choice between a rock and a hard place of burn diesel motoring or paying in a marina whilst hoping for a better forecast to come along. Whilst in Eyemouth we'd like to try and visit Edinburgh and catch the end of the festival so I think our decision is made as it ends at the weekend!

2011: Around the UK

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