Blue Moon's trip around the UK

I can’t be the only yachtsman manqué to have spent his life poring over thumbed copies of Yachting Monthly dreaming of making adventurous passages in far-off waters at the other end of the country. And now I get to fulfil those dreams, it does sometimes feel rather different from the rosy pictures of rugged, rocky coastlines and picturesque ports painted by YM’s seadog regulars. I suppose considering Lancashire a yachting destination may have been an unusual choice, but I am keen on treating all parts of the country equally: just because I have never heard of anyone yachting in Lancashire doesn’t mean you can’t.

Apparently most people leaving Liverpool by boat turn left and head straight for Wales. Having been to both Wales and Lancashire, the latter quite a lot, I can see the wisdom in that. But I went to Wales last year and this is this year, so I was quite keen to tell people I had done something different. Preston, for instance. Whoever sails to Preston? And I quite like Preston, ever since going to an away match at Deepdale and eating butter pies the day after Tom Finney died and experiencing a whole town getting over-emotional. Well, the answer is that you only go to Preston in a boat if you’re prepared to anchor off the entrance and wait for the tide to come in, which if you left Liverpool at the obligatory High Water is a mere six hours…

Fleetwood seemed a good next choice. Or more accurately, the only next choice. Sounds promising – who wouldn’t want to visit the home of Fishermen’s Friends? This time I worked out that I could get in there having either gone very slowly or only waited an hour or two outside. But luckily I remembered that having got in at High Water I could only get out again at High Water – too late to then make it to any sensible next destination. Ditto Glasson Dock, much as I like the idea of tying up next to canal boats, it would take two days of tides to get there and back.

And that’s Lancashire. So Cumbria it is, and I’m cheered by finding that my first destination – Piel Island – is not only sensible (you can get in and out at any state of the tide – unique around here) but also totally weird, being a tiny island in the entrance to Barrow-in-Furness, on which there is only a ruined castle and a pub you can only get to by boat. Apparently it’s quite a challenge finding a landlord, and to whet the appetite they crown anyone daft enough to take the job on as ‘King of Piel’ and make a big fuss. I guess that’s great for a day or two, then you realise you have signed a contract to live on a deserted island at the wrong end of Morecambe Bay which no-one can get to unless the weather’s good. Been to Morecambe Bay? You’ll spot the flaw in that career move then. But as an off-the-beaten-track yachting destination – five stars. What better way to start the new year’s adventure than anchoring off the pub and dinghying ashore to be welcomed by the King of Piel as probably his only customer that evening?

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Destination set, it was finally time to say goodbye to Liverpool. Rather different scenes from our arrival just ahead of a storm in September: flat as a pancake and sultry hot as I made my way back down the Mersey, past places that seemed quite exotic eight months ago but I now know quite well. I had rather more time to look at them than I needed, as in an attempt to get to Piel Island before the legendary pub shut I had left while the tide was still coming in. Motoring flat out at nearly 6 knots meant I could just keep up with the not very fit joggers on the waterfront.

No prospect of sailing at all, and it seemed to take for ever for the tide to turn and make real progress. At least long enough to see that since we last came this way this looks even less like a football stadium than it did before, in spite of being eight months closer to being finished.

Even the novelty of the VTS chat had worn off, although it was nice not to have to run downstairs to speak to him, leaving Raymond to take his chances with the ferries and the cruise liners. Although my progress was so slow you could sense the VTS guy getting a bit bored with telling all his customers about the small yacht that was still to be avoided as it crawled down the channel. After a while he stopped naming ‘Blue Moon’ and started referring to me as ‘a small leisure craft’. True but unnecessarily patronising I thought.

Finally the tide turned and I found myself whisked out past New Brighton and Crosby and Southport and – unlike everyone else heading off to Wales, Ireland, the Isle of Man at 35 knots, or the New World – I turned hard right and began what can only be described as the dullest day on the water. How foolish to think that it would be so much more exciting than looking at Dorset last year. At least there you have cliffs and tide races and ocean-girdling yachts to admire and dinosaur fossils to imagine and secret coves to pretend no-one else knows and military range safety boats to apologise to. The Lancashire coast is surprisingly flat and a long way off, which renders it largely invisible. What a relief then that they have pretended to discover oil here, and have built pretty convincing pretend oil rigs and something that is supposed to be a support ship but I reckon was rejected from a Bond movie set for looking too ridiculous, so I had something to look at for a bit.

And then something to look at for a very long time, because in listing all the Lancashire coastal towns I could think of in the previous post, I had forgotten the bleeding obvious:

I’m not a huge fan of Blackpool, having only been the once but it involved a very early start, unpleasant fish and chips and feeling horribly sick because of the rides the boys had dragged me onto. All of which memories hung around all day as we motored painfully slowly past. Not even that slowly, as you can see the wretched tower from the end of the Queen’s Channel off Liverpool to Barrow in Cumbria.

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So I was hugely relieved finally to cross the wonderfully named Lune Deep (the mouth of the River Lune, of course, after which Luncaster is named) into Cumbria and head up towards Barrow. This also has to be one of the least yachting-like experiences of the trip. Barrow is a pretty big port but it’s up a winding shallow river round the back of loads of salt marshes and shoals of which Piel Island is just one, and to make it all a bit weirder you can’t see Barrow at all, just the wilderness of the marshes. This makes it very atmospheric and quite beautiful as the backdrop is the beginning of the Lake District, but totally weird that to guide the coasters in there are countless light platforms looking like stranded triffids (there you are, showing my age again, bet no-one reads The War of The Worlds any more).

And then you arrive at the anchorage off the island and there is indeed a huge ruined castle, a jetty which looks a few hundred years old, and a large and completely incongrous pub.

Which is – as is the manner of pubs in the middle of nowhere – shut.

Luckily I find this out from Facebook rather than by blowing up the dinghy, going ashore and hammering on the door. But still – this is the high point, indeed the whole point, of the day! What is he thinking of, shutting the pub just because it’s a Tuesday evening in May and he might not get any customers? He’d been open at lunchtime and the burgers were amazing, according to his own account on Facebook. If this was France, not Cumbria, there would be a law insisting that the pub stayed open for passing yachtsmen.

Piel Island is a beautiful spot, no doubt, and stocked with Toxteth Tesco’s Finest burgers I didn’t starve, but I did feel starved of a proper yachting experience. In the distance the Blackpool Tower laughed at me. Never mind, tomorrow I will enjoy a sparkling sail up the beautiful Cumbrian coast to the wonderfully preserved Georgian port town of Whitehaven, where I’ll drink craft ale in a restored dockside warehouse pub and eat fish and chips fresh off the boat.

What could possibly go wrong?

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In an exciting development, I have been alerted to the fact that my blog is well behind the times on account of the lack of live position-updating video. Easily addressed, after a bit of fiddling around. Not sure if it adds a great deal to the narrative, but certainly illustrates the tedium of motoring in a straight line for eight hours

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