Blue Moon's trip around the UK

I foolishly set myself the challenge of circumnavigating all the inhabited bits of the UK and today I ticked off the first corner – the Lizard is the southernmost point of mainland England and if you’re being pedantic I will tick off the southernmost point of island England (is that a concept?) tomorrow.

Unlike the Eddystone Light’s rocks, the Lizard has overfalls and whirlpools and lobsters and dire warnings all over the chart so you have to photograph it from three miles away, and always at an angle of 10 degrees from the horizontal.

Once that formality was completed it was downhill all the way to The Scillies. This doesn’t happen very often, what with the prevailing winds being from the West, so I made the most of it by putting up the spinnaker and enjoying myself, and for the first time spent a whole day sailing with no engine. And what do spinnakers mean? Dophins. I know sailors are quite blasé about dolphins but I love them, so to keep me and the readers happy I will talk about them this once and never again.

I like dolphins because they have nothing to do, and I am insanely jealous. Rather like the Ancient Greeks, life is so easy for them they just sit around wondering how to fill their days. Unlike the Ancient Greeks, who staved off their ennui by fighting each other and the Persians, inventing democracy, literature, theatre, philosophy, warships, the alphabet and red vases, dophins just hang around waiting for a boat to come along so they can play with it. What other animal has so little else to worry about that it can spend hours just mucking around with a boat? What would Charles Darwin have to say about an animal that evolves by being silly? I was once followed by the same pod of dolphins all the way from Milford Haven to Cornwall – about 12 hours. How can a wild animal that’s supposed to be a key part of the natural world afford to take a whole day off, and go 100 miles out of its way, just because it saw a boat with a pink spinnaker?

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And finally to St Mary’s Harbour and Hugh Town. This is the first place on this trip I’ve never been to before. There are sandy beaches, quaint pubs, jolly islanders rowing their gigs around, spotlessly clean and everyone says hello. Idyllic.

I go to the Co-op (presumably Hugh Town’s Co-op? Or St Mary’s Co-op? Or The Scillies’ Co-op? Does the Co-op’s reverse appropriation of its locality annoy you as much as it does me?) to get some fresh bread and salad. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Clean out, The only bread is waffle. Desperate holidaymakers enquire at the checkout. “That’ll be it ’til the boat comes in” is the reply. “About 11 tomorrow”.

No, I don’t think I could live here. It looks nice though.

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Miles	62
Hours sailing	9
Hours motoring	1