Last Months On Avalon

We arrived back in UK at the beginning of August 2008 but our last tenants were not ready to leave our house in Dorridge until October. This meant that we had a few months living on the boat in St Katharine Docks in London. We had originally booked a berth for 6 months but this soon turned into 12 months; we had never lived in London, and having the boat right in the centre of the city enabled us to attend all manner of activities and visit many famous landmarks. The marina itself was an interesting place to be, with boats, including big old Thames barges, going through the lock to and from the Thames daily. Ivory House, built in 1854, in the centre of the 3 basins was originally a warehouse for ivory as well as walrus teeth. With the Thames a few minutes away we often walked past the Tower of London, Fishmongers' Hall, the Monument to the Fire of London, and St Paul's Cathedral; crossing the river via the Millenium Bridge to the Tate Modern, we would then walk past Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, The Golden Hinde, Southwark Cathedral, City Hall and over Tower Bridge back to Avalon.

By the autumn we had purchased a senior railcard, enabling reduced price rail travel, and once we had acquired our OAP bus passes we were able to travel cheaply by train between Dorridge and Marylebone, and across London by bus (free) to the boat and elsewhere. Gradually we eased ourselves back into living in suburbia in the Midlands - we had to get to grips with all the "necessities" of western living which we had managed without for 8 years - car, television, telephone, desktop computer and peripherals, and of course we had to start paying all those other bills - community charge, water rates, gas and electricity - these we had avoided for years with our solar panels, wind generator, collecting rain water, and sailing!

Compensating of course, were the visits with family and friends, many of whom came to see us on the boat in London. We reclaimed various artefacts we had spread over various households: it was a pleasure to rediscover things we had packed away and forgotten. And the delight of growing our own vegetables was explored once the overgrown garden was tamed.

Before we knew it the year was up and we left St Katharine's on August 1st 2009 with Cassandra as crew, retracing our journey down the Thames and staying our first night at Queensborough to wait for the tide. Next came an overnight in Ramsgate, then onto Dover where Barney and Lucia joined us. With them we had an exciting diversion 2 miles upriver to the ancient Cinqueport of Rye: this was a novel experience for us when we tied up to the Town Quay for the night as the river dried out. Cassandra departed from here back to work, then Barney and Lucia left us later the same day from Sovereign Marina, a few miles further west. The two of us continued our last journey in easy stages with stops in Brighton, Littlehampton and Christchurch harbour, our final destination the River Hamble. There we hauled out at Dickie's boatyard at Lower Swanwick, and the long process of unloading accumulated stuff started. Fortunately our nephew Joe and family lived only half an hour's drive away and they had an empty pig-shed where we were able to store various boat bits whilst the lengthy cleaning, polishing and general smartening up of the boat took place. Avalon went onto the market later in August and it was while we were on holiday in France the same month for the wedding of Sarah Rowlands (daughter of friends David and Carole) to Steve Mortimer that we were telephoned about an offer from a potential buyer. By October 2009, after some engineering work on the boat, the deal was done, our adventure was over and Avalon had moved on to new owners.

A year later, we have given two talks about our Circumnavigation: this has entailed re-reading diaries and sailing logs and to some extent reliving the adventures. Now we are landlubbers again it does seem incredible what we achieved. We have been asked whether we miss sailing, and the answer is not much. At this time of life we are happy (for a while anyway) to sit in our armchairs and watch the TV series on the South Pacific and smile, saying - we went there!