All Posts

Missy Bear being taken by tractor to her dry berth in November. Our sailing plans have been thrown up in the air again! No, not Brexit. Nor Covid-19. Not even the crazy little Tsar. Yet! No, the delay to relaunch is actually for a much more pleasant reason: ‘ The Adventures of Missy Bear ’ has won the 2021 ‘Lacey Trophy’. This is an award by the Cruising Association (CA) “ for the best member’s website or blog covering cruising in the year” ! A cynic might say that we might h

Well, it hardly seems any time at all since the school bell rang in Preveza, and it was the end of term. We handed the boat in at the Cleopatra boatyard, and waited for the school bus to take us back across the channel to Preveza. It seemed ages until we would return. What were we going to do? Autumn evenings, cooking on the firepit. Cirencester Market Place, decked out for Christmas We felt it would be rude and ungrateful not to use more of our French visa, so first of all w

My paternal great-grandfather was a bastard. You don’t need to excuse my language, because it is a technical fact. My father is called Walter and his grandfather was also named Walter. But he was born out of wedlock in 1856, to Alice Crooks in Horsley Woodhouse, Derbyshire. Alice was about 19 years old when she gave birth. The registry of Walter’s baptism - well over a year later, on February 7th 1858 - simply names Alice as his mother. There is no father’s name. Alice was a

With the advent of Brexit, the freedom of movement within Europe came to an end: une fin; ein Ende; una fina etc. I’m not sure that I wrote a blog about applying for our French visas last year. We needed a visa because, as non-EU citizens, we can only spend 90 out of a rolling 180 days in the Schengen zone (named after the small wine-making town in Luxembourg where the initial agreement was signed). There are a few countries in Europe not in Schengen – e.g., Eire, Cyprus, Mo

Many crusaders travelled by ship without a compass I was very lost. I was on the top of a hill somewhere in Dartmoor and the fog had come down. I had an OS map and a compass, and all I had been doing for an hour or so was walking in a straight line up the moor. So why could I not just turn around and follow my reciprocal path? Well, the other piece of information you need is that I was carrying a load of plastic bags and a very large and heavy piece of metal – an augur. It wa