A surfeit of winter paddlers (12 in all) gathered at Pease Bay caravan site on a dreich Thursday morning. An optimistic forecast was lying (again) and we had a southerly F3-4 wind but barely a foot of surf. We set off along the coast passing the world famous Siccar point ( world famous geologically speaking) . Knowing that there would be a lot of seal pups we stayed a couple of hundred metres from shore but we could see plenty of white pups on most available landing spots and some in inaccessible places. The last kilometre to Fast castle was pup free allowing some weaving amongst the rocks.
The rain dried up on our return and we headed to Cove harbour for lunch (after 3hrs 20 minutes on the water). Some of us were fortunate enough to see a couple of dolphins and of course several patrolling seals. After lunch some of us explored the former coal mine there – the horizontal entrance shaft is about 50m long and is less than 50cm high at its shallowest. It opens to a 4m diameter vertical shaft which stretched upwards beyond our headtorch lights. A further horizontal shaft is partially submerged and again went beyond our torchlight.
Unfortunately Mr Simpson slipped on the rocks approaching the shaft and hurt his shoulder so our return journey from Cove to Pease Bay involved a tow by Richard Hope though David was able to negotiate the small amount of surf onto Pease Bay beach.
Thanks to all who came (Alice, Richard, Katerina, Graham, Paul, Andy , Sarah & the four Davids) and for enduring the somewhat wintry conditions.