Snork Maiden redux

PS I usually email all of you friends (and ‘friends’) to let you know that the blog’s about. My email has been so constipated this year that I haven’t done the email part, relying on FB to get the word out. But I know that a lot of my friends don’t use it or don’t visit much. So if you are reading this via FB please pass it on to the snail brigade that the blog is OUT THERE. (One of the chief reasons for doing this is to keep in touch, so please do!) In case I don’t get to post another blog until I get back, I am leaving Marans tomorrow for a complicated trip home, hopefully arriving back in Bristol Tuesday 6 July… even more hopefully, we’d like to be back out here in August, a period we usually try to avoid, but, hey, it’s summer and everybody can enjoy it.

The Snaky Sevre June 20 2010 The transition from sea to land is a real transformation – like something out of Alice Through the Looking Glass, especially the first time you make the trip. From the air, it’s clear why you choose a rising tide. You see clearly a bay of very shallow water with a channel carved through it, becoming a river with sneaky, snaky bends (check it out on Google Earth). At first it’s no different from being on the sea, but you do have to keep an accurate course to stay in the channel, since at this point, it’s invisible from boat-level. Once then next safe-water mark appears, things get easier and it becomes more like a wide lake, and there’s a smell of land joining in with the sea tang. Of course the wide lake is deceptive, since outside the channel, you could probably wade. (Snork Maiden draws 1.52 metres = 5 english feet, that means she touches bottom in any less.) The channel proper, begins, and from then on you hop from one marker buoy to the next – r...