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<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Everywhere I look, I see land. Rather muddy land, admittedly. But here, half a mile further up Kirby Creek, surrounded by saltings and winding water, with only the birds and the seals for company, I am as protected as I can be.<\/p>\n
Last night we had a bit of wind and it barely raised a wave big enough to slap against the hull. We did heel over as a gust caught the mast and revved up the wind generator. The coffee pot fell off the cooker but otherwise, Samsara <\/em>stayed as rock-steady as if she had been chocked up in a boatyard.<\/p>\n This was all because of The Expedition: It\u2019s now a week since I arrived here and the water tanks ran dry on Thursday night. I have another 30 litres in cans and a couple of emergency bottles but what with that and running out of apples, the time had come to go and find civilization.<\/p>\n Round here, the village of Kirby-Le-Soken fits that bill. It has a pub and a shop and \u2013 presumably, a water tap. All I had to do was take the dinghy up to the head of the creek where, apparently, there is a quay accessible at high tide. That was going to be at 1234 yesterday and so I set off at about 1100, properly dressed in wet-weather gear with all the gash and the empty water cans and Google Maps on my phone to stop me following the wrong branch of the creek.<\/p>\n For some inexplicable reason, the outboard engine wouldn\u2019t start. Odd, that. Now that it has a new fuel tap, it\u2019s been very reliable\u2026 maybe all it needs is a moment to cool down \u2013 2-stokes are funny like that. I started rowing.<\/p>\n An hour later, after several stops to try the engine again during which I drifted backwards into the mud and the seal, with its head out of the water like a Labrador with no ears, watched silently as if wondering what on earth I was doing.<\/p>\n Actually, what I was doing was checking Google Maps and realising that after an hour of hard rowing, I was still only half way \u2013 which meant that at this rate, by the time I got there, walked up to the village and back carrying 30kg of water and with the shopping on my back, the tide would be falling fast. What if I ran aground on a falling tide \u2013 marooned for eight hours in a dinghy surrounded by thigh-deep mud?<\/p>\n Some things just don\u2019t seem sensible. I admitted defeat and turned round. Of course, this meant rowing against the tide. I remember thinking that I was earning my lunch and calculated how long it was since breakfast \u2013 and, come to that, how long since I had drunk half a litre of vitamin and mineral supplement and a large cup of coffee\u2026<\/p>\n \u2026and how it is that one of life\u2019s more undignified manoeuvres is peeing when you are in a tiny inflatable dinghy and dressed up in chest-high waterproof salopettes\u2026<\/p>\n Casting around for a solution, I spied a jetty \u2013 well, a haphazard collection of old timbers sticking out of the mud with a few rotting planks on top. It would have to do.<\/p>\n Somewhat gingerly, I stepped ashore and walked up the staging to what passed on Horsey Island for solid ground. I know all about Horsey Island. It is privately owned and a bird sanctuary \u2013 no landing allowed. In fact, Tamsin and I came here in 1995 and interviewed the owner, Joe Backhouse, when we were writing about our adventures for the Daily Telegraph\u2019s travel pages. This might very well have been the spot where Blue the dog disgraced himself by catching a Brent goose (I don\u2019t know who was more surprised).<\/p>\n The place didn\u2019t seem to have changed. It was just as desolate as I remembered \u2013 in fact, having dealt with the urgent matter at hand, I took out my phone and recorded a quick 360 for Instagram (you can see it on john.passsmore.756).<\/p>\n \u201cAs, you can see,\u201d I told the commentary. \u201cAbsolutely nobody about\u2026 totally desolate\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n That was when I noticed I wasn\u2019t alone. An equally old man with a white beard and a woolly hat arrived with two plastic bags.<\/p>\n I think I should be congratulated on finding something to say. This was it: \u201cOh, hello. I\u2019ve just stopped for a pee. I hope you don\u2019t mind.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019m afraid, I can\u2019t remember what he said in reply (would you?). But he did ask me if that was my boat anchored further down the creek.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t anchor there,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s an oyster bed.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cReally? I didn\u2019t know about that. There\u2019s nothing in the books about it\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a sign,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n I peered. \u201cA sign? I didn\u2019t see it. Where is it?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt blew away.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAh.\u201d<\/p>\n But he did suggest I should move to one of the vacant moorings: \u201cAnyway you wouldn\u2019t want to be there tonight. There\u2019s a Force Nine coming tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n And with that, he climbed into the ancient dinghy and rowed off across the creek, gesturing as he went, towards an enormous orange mooring buoy and saying: \u201cYou can take that one. The boat that\u2019s usually on it just came out for the winter.\u201d<\/p>\n So that\u2019s where we are \u2013 in a deep hole surrounded by shallow water (we\u2019ll never get out except at high tide) \u2013 and the shallow water surrounded in turn by soggy but protective land.<\/p>\n All I need now is for the outboard to work tomorrow. I just rang my friend David the fisherman who helped me catch a herring and a brace of whiting. He tells me I\u2019ll get water at the pub. If I ever get there, I think I might deserve more than water.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Everywhere I look, I see land. Rather muddy land, admittedly. But here, half a mile further up Kirby Creek, surrounded by saltings and winding water, with only the birds and the seals for company, I am as protected as I can be. Last night we had a bit of wind and it barely raised a … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=598"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":604,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598\/revisions\/604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}