An Autumn Day in Cornwall

[pelmut]

Down to Helford River Sailing Club this afternoon , sat in the sun watching the tide go by. Then a drive home , watching the sunset across
Goonhilly Down ......The Satellite Dishes and the wind vanes were silloueted in the sunset.

Evening temperature down to 5 C .......Rod....

I spent last week visiting a friend in Trewint ["The Place of the Wind"], waking up to a view of Goonhilly and Bude from the bedroom window every morning.  One evening we drove just up the coast to a headland and ate our supper in the back of the van, looking out at the setting sun across Widemouth Bay - Cornwall is beautiful..

[weeladdie18]

Love your pictures , Tom....I went up to Skye ,camping with My mini pick up truck....The ground was hard. I had to drive steel spikes
into the ground with a four pound hammer. Even got the vehicle jammed on a rock in the middle of the camp site...
That was before the bridge was built.....were there two ferries at northerly and southerly ends of the island ? .....I must be going back
nearly forty years.
I remember buying my second Kilt in Inverness . I wore that one for over 35 years. I had an 8 yard 16 ounce Kilt
Made to measure in Inverness nearly two years ago.....Since then I purchased two or three ex military Kilts from a large British M.O.D.
Disposal Company. One was made in one of my old family Clan Tartans.
Heavily made for a weeladdie, possibly a fourteen year old Boy Soldier ; a wee drummer boy. It was calculated that the Kilt was probably
made over Twenty years ago. I actually wore it in the re built Officers' Mess of an old National Service Establishment for basic training of
raw recruits. I was entertained by an old N.C.O. who taught the rookies how to wear their Kilts.....An old Scottish Castle where I believe the
Scottish King kept his lions.
I then went to Fort George and spent a couple of days with the Replica Detatchment of the 1916 Gordon Highlanders....
back to the Black Watch Museum at Perth... Then down to Edinburgh To catch the Cross Country Express to Redruth..
then an hour on a bus across Cornwall ...11 hours on the train.
The Trip up to Inverness the previous Year was 15 hours from Penzance..... Plenty of stories there.
How to wear the Kilt for a week in Scotland.....
In Edindurgh, I met an American Gentleman from Hawii who was going to Norway to find his ancestors ....Rod

[weeladdie18]

Down to Helford River Sailing Club this afternoon , sat in the sun watching the tide go by. Then a drive home , watching the sunset across
Goonhilly Down ......The Satellite Dishes and the wind vanes were silloueted in the sunset.

Evening temperature down to 5 C .......Rod....

I spent last week visiting a friend in Trewint ["The Place of the Wind"], waking up to a view of Goonhilly and Bude from the bedroom window every morning.  One evening we drove just up the coast to a headland and ate our supper in the back of the van, looking out at the setting sun across Widemouth Bay - Cornwall is beautiful..[/quote

One of my old relatives lived on the cliffs above Widemouth bay , Back in the fifties . He was involved in setting up the old Surf Life Guards at
Widemouth...There are old postcards of the Lads with their jeeps, stand up paddle boards and line reels.....the old Australian Surf boat is in the
National Maritime Museum in Falmouth. Used for racing in the surf. ....the sea is a dangerous place if you get it wrong.
only recently a casualty was swept off their feet and drowned.....the seventh wave is the big wave.

[weeladdie18]

Tom. I hope I do not get into trouble for going off topic on my own off topic thread . Here goes....
My father always called my mother "Trouble ".
" It is the Irish Blood in her, you know. ". ......I have spoken of the old shipwright's saying.......
" Every foot of boat is a yard of misery " , ......so I named one of my boats " Double Trouble " .....
I later discovered that one of the lobster boats on the coast of Maine , South West of Canada , has the same name. .....

I say, " Do not blame the wife for her short comings. Blame yourself for marrying the lady. "

My father knew his deceased Father in Law was a London Irish Tailor.

This is a story of an Old Scottish Family living in a Dorset Sea Port, marrying into a London Irish family.
Then one daughter married into a Lowland Scottish Family and another marrying into a family who came from Wales to London
and then moved to the Purbecks, in Dorset.
In my lifetime I have moved from Hampshire to Dorset to Somerset to Devon to Dorset to Cornwall .
I have Scottish ,Welsh ,Irish and a bit of Eastern Mediteranean Blood in me.....The Old Med Genes still show in my Face.
I would call myself Proper Cornish.....no Cornish Blood. This is a very long story........Rod.

[weeladdie18]

Tom, ....these are the thoughts going through my head in an Autumn Day in Cornwall.....I think the pressure must be falling.....
I always blame the weather .......
Possibly S.W. 3 to 4 today. ...Monday
We might be due to sail Wayfarers or perhaps a Drascombe Lugger on the Helford River late tomorrow afternoon.

The last time we sailed a Wayfarer the organiser did not delegate a skipper so we had a straw poll. One gentleman had an R.Y.A. Novice ticket
The second had an R.Y.A. Power Boat Ticket. He had sailed the river for years .....an elderly lady hired out boats on the river once told him ;
" If you can swim out to that boat on her mooring and get the sails up you can hire her ."

This gentleman looked me , and said ... " what about you ? " .......I replied ...
"the last dealings I had with an R.Y.A. Commercial Yachtmaster Examiner were when I went on a 55 foot ketch as a gash hand and ended up as
local pilot out of Weymouth as neither the owner or the R.Y.A. Commercial Examiner knew the local waters. "

The straw poll agreed that I would be Skipper of a Wayfarer . I agreed on condition that if I fouled it up , I would put someone else in charge and not accept any responsibility for any of my errors of judgement......three men in a boat. ..............Rod

[weeladdie18]

I prefer to sail on the drascombe lugger....the usual skipper is one of my folk heroes . ....He was the Captain of a tanker in the South China Seas.
The story goes that the tanker was boarded by bare footed pirates with guns. ...Very dangerous stuff.
He ordered his crew to obtain a crate of beer and throw the bottles at the pirates feet...the pirates did not like the smell of the beer or the
broken glass around their feet,....so they all jumped over the side of the ship......
The captain was in tears.....He could not get the deposit back on his broken beer bottles. ................................Rod

[weeladdie18]

We took a novice out on the Drascombe.....I was learning the local pilotage....I asked the Old Sea Captain " Any rocks this close inshore ? "
The reply was " Only mud here. You will see the birds walking on the water. If they are walking round the boat ,we have a problem . "

The novice immediately asked if we had a toilet on the boat......we did not see him for a few weeks. .................Rod

[weeladdie18]

Latest met office forecast Perhaps a bit of sun this morning and a bit more squalling wind this evening....last Tuesday we had squalls of 22 Knots.
wait and see what the day brings.....The weather changes very quickly on this peninsular...Met Office Forecast Lizard Lighthouse is usually
accurate to the nearest hour ,when it gets itself sorted out. Dawn is perhaps a bit late with the low cloud. Might be better by 0800....Rod

[weeladdie18]

I made a bit of a mess my thread this morning....First problem ....I lost a couple of posts.....Second problem..... I thought today was Tuesday
not Monday....Third problem every time I try to edit, the edit deletes the subsequent text. My theory is that this is a windows 8.1 problem.
I trust the mods will realise that I am not going off the thread of this " off topic thread"... the thread concerns the thoughts which come out
of my head during "An Autumn Day in Cornwall ".................... ................Rod

[weeladdie18]

There is now another posting fault........... When I post... the screen goes blank and the Icons do not show that the post is being processed for
posting....when I close and reopen the thread the posted post has been correctly installed. I have had these problems before......Rod

[weeladdie18]

Test 2 .........Test 1 showed no faults. now posting test 2

[weeladdie18]

Test 2...report ....submit.... working o.k.

[weeladdie18]

Report re test 2...... Screen says I cannot post report 2 as a post so soon after test 2

subsequent report on test 2 Text above now accepted. This is now test 3 as an edited test 2

[weeladdie18]

Carl. now tried to make you aware of problem....on pressing submit....this action activated d.v.d. system...try another test.

[weeladdie18]

Carl Report on post 1 to you.....working o.k.