Present, James F in his Enterprise, Astrid and me in my wayfarer.
We set off at 6.00pm on Saturday and had a very normal fair wind sail up to Broadoak, 1 mile past Newnham, where we pulled up at a friend of Dave Phillips’ who had offered us a field to camp in. Dave, Jo and Amelie met us, and Howard and Jane just happened to be walking by, and we all went to the pub. The night was broken only by the relentless crowing of a couple of cockerels and the banging of sheep on gates.
In the morning we started by watching the bore which was about 1 foot high and rather fun but Astrid I’m sorry to say was having tea in bed at the time. Then we went up river for about a mile, then the tide turned. On the way down of course I suddenly realised that I had no idea where the main channel was round Bullo to the Noose as they are covered, and indeed the centreboard touched. Astrid was rowing at the time and we spun on the centre board, which dug in and the tide rushed past. That was the most hairy part of the trip. Astrid managed to get the board up thank God and we continued. We passed Lydney at 3 hours after high, there was still water there, of course finding the channel on the Noose was hit and miss but the standing birds were helpful. We carried on, it really is fabulous to do that section at such a different point of the tide, really interesting. The Oldbury reservoir wall was high and dry, and there was a bloke fishing off it, then we decided to beach on Oldbury sands, however we had to rename them Oldbury Sludge, and we moved on, crossing the channel to Pill house rock where there is a small bit of sand. We stopped there but I wouldn’t recommend it because there are a lot of rocks amongst the sand and my boat was wedged between two rocks in the end, mercifully surviving. Then we cooked up, snoozed etc etc and finally the tide came in – we went up into Coln Pill where there are 2 buoys and ate more, then came up on the the tide. It was a good’n!
Annabel.