North Barrule

Since Jim was in a weakened state through lack of pork pies following our little bit of a paddle, I went off on my own for a stroll.
The slopes of North Barrule are open country, by permission of the land owner and their tennants. The views would be great on a clear day and weren't bad even with the poor visibility that we were experiencing.

St Bees to the Isle of Man

Months of training (a quick paddle along the Bridgewater canal) and exhaustive preparation (an email to the ferry company) resulted in a successful crossing from St Bees to the Isle of Man in Jim's double kayak:Kirstine kindly drove Jim and me to the campsite at St. Bees on Friday evening. We packed some of our gear into the boat before getting a few hours of sleep. The tents and the rest of the gear were packed at 2:30am on Saturday morning, in preparation to catch the high tide.

We paddled away three minutes behind schedule, leaving the slipway at St. Bees at 3:33am:

[Photo: JimK]

It started to get light about an hour after we set off and the sun was well up by half past five:
The Liverpool Coastguard were very helpful and supportive via the VHF. There wasn't much going on - we only saw a few other craft on the water. We did get an offer of a bacon barm from the helmsman of the Night Cat though:

[Photo: JimK]

Visibility was quite poor - we could only see about a mile through the mist. We were almost at Maughold Head before the white buildings of the lighthouse became vaguely perceptible.
We landed on the Isle of Man about 6hrs 15mins after leaving St. Bees. By 10:00 we had phoned home to let our other halves know that we were safe:

Charts by cycle

Jim and I decided that the forecast was looking good for a little jaunt in the Irish Sea by double sea kayak. Since neither of us had any charts, I took the afternoon off work and nipped across to Warrington on my bicycle. I got back home with the necessary items a few hours, 50km and two punctures later.