Many years ago, when driving home from Italy, we decided to drop in to Munich because Alex wanted to visit the BMW museum. We were surprised by how busy the campsite was and it turned out our visit just happened to coincide with Oktoberfest. With a similar lack of planning, after catching the rather good bus service between Port Edgar and Edinburgh, we found we had hit Edinburgh on the last day of the fringe festival. On impulse (because it appealed to Helen) we bought tickets for the acclaimed Soweto Gospel Choir and later spent 30 min in an orderly queue in the rain to get in to the stunning Assembly Hall. Good fun, and an opportunity to sit down for a few minutes. Helen in particular was rather low in energy. However, an oversized cake afterwards in lieu of proper food did not seem to help matters.
We were both despondent when leaving Port Edgar, feeling we had not done the place justice after all the effort made to get there. However, it was easy sailing downwind, to a pleasant anchorage off North Berwick. This is at the entrance of the Firth of Forth, under the shadow of Berwick Law, which Alex recalled climbing when on holiday as a child and where Helen, with surprise, caught a large mackerel.
Helen has been enjoying fishing more and more. Initially there were a few qualms – if we caught a fish there would be the messy business of dealing with it – but our confidence has grown as our experience has shown we can spend hours with the rod over the side without any danger of hooking anything. Still, unless you are vegetarian, it seems right to face the experience of catching and killing your own food. The mackerel tasted great, after gutting, filleting and pan-frying.
For weeks we have been watching nature at work in all its blood and gore, and judging by the size of the gannet colony we passed the following day, there can’t be a local shortage of mackerel. Bass rock, sitting in the entrance to the Firth, is absolutely teeming with them. From a distance it appeared as if it was snowing over the rock, and for 15 miles up the coast we passed raiding parties of up to a dozen birds hunting together.
Our destination, Eyemouth, had a narrow rock-strewn entrance leading to a pontoon right in the centre of town. Not quite enough water for us, especially at spring tides, but the bottom was soft and Ventata wiggled her keel half a metre into the mud each low water. The pontoon was dead on the route of the coastal path which was good for walking, if not for privacy. A well-defined, rolling path took us on wonderful cliff walk to St Abbs Head for lunch, and also provided the first blackberries of the year. And, on departure at about 7am we had absolutely the best send off from Scotland that you can imagine, with a pod of dolphins jumping along our bows as we exited the bay.
Ventata 
It’s definitely autumn! Our garden blackberries have been ripening beautifully for a couple of weeks now – as evidenced by the number of items of Zoe’s clothing stained purple…! There are so many that we haven’t needed to go out foraging at all. Tonight was the first crumble though, with some of the windfall Bramleys. Happy days.
Give Northumberland a wave for us – sadly I think it will be a few years before the kids can manage the drive to the fatherland… n2 is due in Jan ☺
Is it just a quick sail back down now? I can’t believe how many months it’s been already – I’ve loved reading about all your adventures, makes up for not managing to get away ourselves this year.
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Well congratulations! This month’s pbo (practical boat owner magazine) has an article by a couple who took their motor cruiser from Brittany to the med via the french canals, with a two year old and a newborn, but I have to say it didn’t sound entirely stress free! I remember driving up here years ago and thinking we were making good progress when we got to my grandma’s place at market rasen, how wrong! So we still have a fair way to go. We have had headwinds pretty much all the way from the orkneys which is not helpful either!!
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