Farewell Scotland

Well, we eventually left Eyemouth after an interesting few days. The Herring Queen festival, fistycuffs in the pub, two tables of drinks knocked over, but I was quick enough to snatch up our two, so not a drop of Nuttall drink spilt. Quite exciting for a while, before the fighters were taken outside and everything carried on as if nothing had happened.

The river Eye came up in spate after the Friday night rain. See pic. We then sat tight for a while as the entrance was not nice. We looked at the so called most unusual golf hole in Britain. See photo of the tee shot. A 170 yard par three, with a 155 yard carry over the sea inlet.

We leftEyemouth at 09.15 on Monday. A little nervous going out as the waves were pretty big. We hoisted sail and had an exciting sleigh ride downwind in force 5 with 3m+ waves. The boat screwed round more than once just about dipping the end of the boom in the water, with me trying hard to hold it down the waves. After about four or five hours the wind eased a little, but was now right behind, so we had a few gybes to do to hold our course. Eventually the wind dropped and we motored for the last two hours into Blyth, where we booked into the Royal Northumberland Yacht Club and took down the Scottish courtesy flag we put up many weeks ago.

We met some interesting Dutch people on quite large boats. Unfortuneately the club was not doing food, but the steward made us a very large platter of the best chips ever, which together with a large plate of bread and butter allowed me to introduce Gail and the Dutch to chip butties and a jar of cockles. Delicious.

After a quick walk along the sea front we slipped at 13.00 towards the Tyne. See next blog. By the way, the tee shot for the golfers is to the two small bumps on the horizon.