Day 45 (3rd August 2022)

 Rain woke us both at 5am-ish. Boo hiss. We started de-camping at 06.45 as I still had a somewhat unrealistic fantasy that some kind boat owner would be willing to sail out to the Western Isles if I got onto the quayside early enough and pleaded with the best sad puppy dog eyes I could muster. I even took a Germinal CCXXIV mug with me so that I could point out all the difficult-to-get-to places I'd managed so far.

To no avail. No one was willing to sail out west, even though by 09.30, the sun was shining, the wind was barely a Beaufort force 3 and bus loads of tourists were queuing up for any boat any where. The most westerly any boat out of St.Mary's was heading was St.Agnes, so that's what tickets we bought. We had 45minutes before the boat left St.Marys so I decided to cheer myself up by doing an unscheduled pic of the place that Sea Power kicked off their "The Decline of British Sea Power " tour in 2003. Stop #99

THE SCILLONIAN CLUB 

I mentioned this to the woman selling the boat tickets and she couldn't actually remember this momentous occasion, even though she was on the committee. She is quite elderly though, so I put this down to memory loss.

But back to our day trip... don't get me wrong, St.Agnes is lovely, but I'd already done Porth Conger, and even worse, when we got there, discovered that the Turk's Head didn't do lunch on a Wednesday. 

So, I dragged Guy & Morgan to the western side of the island in the hope that the view would be better than nothing. My view was what should have been stop #100

BISHOP'S ROCK

Once again I'm relying on your good will to believe that there really is one of the biggest, tallest and most impressive lighthouses in the picture!

This picture, like so many distance photos I've taken on my phone really doesn't quite capture what you see with your own eyes. Bishop's Rock really does dominate the horizon and looks so much more impressive that the above pic would have you believe. Which is just as well when I tried to bluff stop #101

RETARRIER LEDGES 

To the old sea dog captains credit, he did admit that even if I had gone out to the Western Isles at this time of day, because it was high tide, the Retarrier Ledges would have been under water so 6 meters or 6 miles away, I wouldn't have been able to get a picture of them. I was mildly comforted by this realisation. 

Homemade tomato soup and crab rolls for lunch, a swim opposite Porth Conger and some more drama. Cries of "GET HELP GET HELP GET HELP!" from a canoe at the tip of Gugh got people scrambling to their feet and phones and within minutes a fast boat from St.Mary's was on its way to deliver aid. A man without a life jacket had got into difficulties but not serious enough to be taken back to St.Mary's. I didn't get any of this on my phone unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, who knows. 

Trip back to Penzance was hot and uneventful, and sadly our digs for the night are atrocious, but at least we are warm and dry! Guy & Morgan return to London tomorrow, and I tackle the South Coast in the last leg of my Germinal CCXXIV adventure!

Allons-y 

Douglas Germinal CCXXIV Brain over and out