Blythe and Amble
Hartlepool was in County Durham but our next two ports of call are in Northumberland, so we feel we are making progress. The coast is lovely here with sandy beaches but shame about the weather, which is still mainly cold and wet.
We left Hartlepool on Thursday morning at 10.35 in sunshine but it didn't last very long. We had an uneventful sail to Blyth apart from a very strange cloud which suddenly gave us heavy rain and gusts of 25 knots for a short while. We arrived at Blyth just after 4 in the afternoon, having been visited by a curious seal on the way in. Once again there are lots of wind farms around here at sea and along the coast and so Blyth is more a commercial port for fishing vessels and wind farm boats than a yacht haven. However we were welcomed at the Royal Northumberland Yacht Club pontoon by their friendly berthing master and heard the lovely Northumberland accent for the first time this trip. He gleefully told us the code for the gate was 1-9-4-5 or 1945, but he had to be careful how he said it because they had had some German boats in a few days ago and they had not been amused!
Tradition said that we had to visit the yacht club for a drink in the evening as it is an old wooden lightship which has seen service on the Seven Stones off the Isle of Scilly amongst other places. A lightship is essentially a floating lighthouse used in dangerous places where a lighthouse can't be built. At one time they were manned, often two or four weeks at a time before the crew were changed. If the supply ship couldn't get out to them because of bad weather they may be there longer. As they had no motor they had to be towed into position and anchored, so quite a dangerous place to be in bad weather.
The next day we walked into Blyth town, not a lot to say about that, we did have a coffee and an ice cream and got a few essential supplies and got the bus back to the marina.
We decided to move on to Amble while the weather held and left at 4 in the afternoon to get the high tide to enable us to get over the sill into Amble marina. I don't think Josh wanted to risk going aground this time!!
Again a lovely coastline but we are finding rocks now on the chart, often with strange local names such as the Pigs and Sows and around Amble they are called "bushes" hence the Pan bush (marked dangerous in swell on the chart), N E bush and Steel bush! The entrance to Amble is marked by a rocky island, Coquet Island, which is an RSPB bird sanctuary and is home to puffins and the very rare Roseate tern. For more information go to RSPB website or roseatetern.org and there is also a live webcam rspb.org/coquetlive.
We arrived at just before 9pm and again we were greeted by a curious seal popping it's head up to say hello and to see if we had any fish.
We had eaten "on the run" so early to bed. We had friends coming down in the morning with a promise of bacon sandwiches, so we set the alarm for 8am. Raining again but it was so nice to see our friends Louisa and Darren with their two children Freya and Sam who were very excited about being on a boat. Thank you for the bacon sandwiches they were heaven. When they left we had a downpour of hail stones and thunder and lightening, but better weather is promised for tomorrow. We are staying a few days in Amble so I look forward to exploring this beautiful part of the Northumberland coast.
We left Hartlepool on Thursday morning at 10.35 in sunshine but it didn't last very long. We had an uneventful sail to Blyth apart from a very strange cloud which suddenly gave us heavy rain and gusts of 25 knots for a short while. We arrived at Blyth just after 4 in the afternoon, having been visited by a curious seal on the way in. Once again there are lots of wind farms around here at sea and along the coast and so Blyth is more a commercial port for fishing vessels and wind farm boats than a yacht haven. However we were welcomed at the Royal Northumberland Yacht Club pontoon by their friendly berthing master and heard the lovely Northumberland accent for the first time this trip. He gleefully told us the code for the gate was 1-9-4-5 or 1945, but he had to be careful how he said it because they had had some German boats in a few days ago and they had not been amused!
Tradition said that we had to visit the yacht club for a drink in the evening as it is an old wooden lightship which has seen service on the Seven Stones off the Isle of Scilly amongst other places. A lightship is essentially a floating lighthouse used in dangerous places where a lighthouse can't be built. At one time they were manned, often two or four weeks at a time before the crew were changed. If the supply ship couldn't get out to them because of bad weather they may be there longer. As they had no motor they had to be towed into position and anchored, so quite a dangerous place to be in bad weather.
The next day we walked into Blyth town, not a lot to say about that, we did have a coffee and an ice cream and got a few essential supplies and got the bus back to the marina.
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| Blyth |
We decided to move on to Amble while the weather held and left at 4 in the afternoon to get the high tide to enable us to get over the sill into Amble marina. I don't think Josh wanted to risk going aground this time!!
Again a lovely coastline but we are finding rocks now on the chart, often with strange local names such as the Pigs and Sows and around Amble they are called "bushes" hence the Pan bush (marked dangerous in swell on the chart), N E bush and Steel bush! The entrance to Amble is marked by a rocky island, Coquet Island, which is an RSPB bird sanctuary and is home to puffins and the very rare Roseate tern. For more information go to RSPB website or roseatetern.org and there is also a live webcam rspb.org/coquetlive.
We arrived at just before 9pm and again we were greeted by a curious seal popping it's head up to say hello and to see if we had any fish.
We had eaten "on the run" so early to bed. We had friends coming down in the morning with a promise of bacon sandwiches, so we set the alarm for 8am. Raining again but it was so nice to see our friends Louisa and Darren with their two children Freya and Sam who were very excited about being on a boat. Thank you for the bacon sandwiches they were heaven. When they left we had a downpour of hail stones and thunder and lightening, but better weather is promised for tomorrow. We are staying a few days in Amble so I look forward to exploring this beautiful part of the Northumberland coast.
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| Pirate Sam |
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