Sea for Cumbria 2008! (DAY 2)

After a night in the luxurious tented village that we'd created in the corner of our field, we awoke refreshed and ready for a first and then, for good measure, a second breakfast before contemplating the sea on the other side of the wall (it wasn't right on the other side of the wall of course, 'cos then the wall would have been a dam, but you get the picture). Anyway, the sea looked a bit on the choppy side and, worse still, there was a stiff headwind - force 4 gusting 5-6 that wasn't going to help progress.

We spent some of the morning fashioning a new footrest for Pete's boat from an old fridge handle and a jubilee clip - he'd lost both rests during his landing spill the previous night and beachcomber-Jasper had only managed to find one of them among the shingles. We then repeated our heavy-lifting act to get the boats down to the sea and hit the waves.

As we paddled along into the wind we thought about our missing Sea for Cumbria comrades and whether anyone would notice that, of the eight people in the original team photo, only five of us were here, along with recently-adopted Pete. Wendy and Mike has decided not to paddle this year, preferring to wait until they were more expert (a sensible ploy, many would argue) and Kevin had been stricken with a lurgy which was causing him extreme fatigue and loss of balance - neither of which would have helped him much! Anyway, it would have been nice to have 9 boats rather than 6 but, on the bright side, my soreen loaves would have been even more short lived had this been the case.

The day wore like an ill-fitting raincoat as we paddled on and on toward the unmistakable silhouettes of the various facilities at Sellafield but the land didn't pass by to our right at any great speed. The wind was so stiff that, combined with the water conditions, we were making less than 1 knot despite normally being able to paddle at 4-5 times that speed. As such, we (slightly dejectedly) made landfall just South of Ravenglass at Eskmeals - just next to the famous and beautiful MOD firing range. This time it was Ian's turn to capsize near the shore following a lengthy and slightly unnerving paddle in through the swell and surf. He was fine though and he didn't even lose any footrests.

The business of finding somewhere to camp tuned out to be especially tricky as all the land was MOD owned and camping there is forbidden. However, as these things go, a nice local lady let us put our boats and gear in her garden and a friend of hers kindly volunteered to take us in his van to the nearest campsite at Waberthwaite, offering to come and pick us up the next day!

After setting up camp, it was time for us to walk up to the village for morale-boosting food and beer, with Jasper having deep fried whale and Mark teaching us various intriguing card games which all, mercifully, involved keeping you clothes on. We played until late, sitting outside in the beer garden with half a mind on the game and the other half on the wind...