Some time ago David (hubby) said he'd like to sail on Greta, a Thames Sailing Barge who is based locally at Whitstable Harbour during the Summer months. Greta was launched 120 years ago in 1892 and, as a working cargo barge she carried ammunition, beer, grain, malt, building products etc. She also took part in the evacuation of British Soldiers from Dunkirk in 1940 and she is the oldest active 'Dunkirk Little Ships' and bears a plaque honouring that fact. She is a fantastic sight when under full sail and its wonderful that she has been preserved and still having a useful working life ...
Nowadays she is privately owned by Steve Norris who has undertaken raising sponsorship to restore her and who takes paying passengers out into the Thames Estuary during the 'Summer' months.
Anyway, I'd booked this trip some time ago and to be honest when I saw the weather forecast for this week I had my fingers crossed the trip would be cancelled ... but it wasn't. However, we were very lucky and just had a couple of light rain showers during the 6 hour trip - but it was VERY cold and windy and I didn't think I'd ever thaw out despite wearing several layers of warm clothing and a waterproof jacket!! This is July for goodness sake.
I'll post more tomorrow about the Barge and what we saw ... but here are some pics of the 1st mate and 2nd mate who accompany Steve on his sailings.
This is Alfie - he's a very experienced sailor. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt etc:
and this is Ludo - who really doesn't like the cold weather but didn't want to be carried below deck in case she missed out on anything. She doesn't have much coat and it really was very cold and windy yesterday so I sympathise:
When it got too cold, Alfie let Ludo share his upper deck house:
but on the couple of occasions when the sun showed through the clouds, she found a sheltered place out of the wind and curled up for a snooze
Well, you can see they are less than impressed with the scenery! What you can see in the background is basically what we set sail to look at. I'll blog about them tomorrow but I have to say I wasn't much interested in viewing them until we got close and I got hooked ... I've spent several hours researching these strange buildings and am now toying with the idea of booking a special visit to go inside one .... more tomorrow
and although Ludo was interested in the food she could barely keep her eyes open ... she must have had a very busy night methinks! She slept for most of the 6 hours we were at sea.
anyway, David told me off for taking so many pics of the mutts, but they really were cute and so well behaved!
We saw a seal in the sea but it was too far away to get decent photos of ... but we had a brilliant day and managed to thaw out after only 4 hours back home :-)
i would have loved to have done that but...i would have probably spent most of the time with my head overboard :p
ReplyDeletei was wondering what those buildings were, sea forts :D very neat!
It was fun but just a few degrees warmer would have been good :-) Well done for knowing about the forts - we can see them from land but close up they're amazing ... really wouldn't have wanted to be stationed there during the war though
ReplyDeletei didnt know what they were, had to look it up lol
ReplyDeletei wouldnt have wanted to be stationed there either o.0