The tide was coming in, and I was surprised how quickly it was flowing within the harbour. In mid stream it put up quite a chop for a while.This was without there being any wind.It doesn't look much in the photo. It never does.
The harbour master's office is within the old lifeboat house.There is a board nearby with old photos and a bit about the common approach the architect took to this and other lifeboat houses.
When I went to get some cash out I was distressed to see the state of my account.I had to persevere with a slow Internet connection to try and check my account online as there is no Nat West in Wells. I soon discovered that the English Language School had not been paying in any money for using my house. I had been relying on that, but a phone call had it sorted. Someone had been off sick who had been responsible. I can now afford to eat again.
Wells is an attractive little town. The vernacular is river pebble and brick walls with clay tiles. This sort of mixture of local stone and brick quoins is my favourite type type of old building. The flint and brick of Dorset and some parts of the South East are similar and offer a good palette to make new buildings. The house on the left is a one up one down former fisherman's cottage.
There is one particularly fine building on the quayside. It used to load grain onto coasters. It is now an estate agents on the ground floor and luxury apartments above.I wonder what they've put in that projecting bit. Loo with a view?
There is a house, which has been converted into holiday flats, which they have decided to advertise its date by putting it both on the walls and the roof.
The narrow high street is pedestrianised and the shop keepers seem to be trying to outdo each other in seeing how much stock they can get outside. It must take a while getting this lot out and in at the beginning and end of the day.
I cycled out to the entrance from the sea to compare the charts with what you can see in daylight. I also wanted to see the beach huts and beach I had seen in the gloom last night.It sort of makes it easier to deal with what I may find in the morning, but it depends upon whether there will be an onshore wind and the strength of the incoming tide. The beach looks like a great place with its white sand, but that fast flowing river entrance is not a safe place for kids to swim.
There are a lot of black headed gulls in the harbour. they are much more smaller and more graceful than the usual herring and black backed gulls. This one was perched on an upturned hull.
I had been worried over the last week or so about the vision in my right eye being a little poorer and I seem to have a few more floaters. These are a common problem for short sighted old gits like me, but as I had a torn retina a couple of years ago I wanted to get it checked out.The local optician was able to fit me in. He said I seemed to have some bubbles in my eye along with the floaters but no recurrence of a torn retina. It's probably the start of the glaucoma I have in my family, but its easily sorted with a lens implant he said cheerily.
Just at the end of the pontoon is a floating restaurant/bar on the old sailing boat called the Albatross. The people on the deck drinking this evening are basking in the late sunshine. If I ever finish battling with this slow Internet I may be tempted to join them.
I went onto Paul's blog and was glad to see he had been reconnected with his parrot. I phone him to see how it had happened.He said he went knocking on doors in Grimsby in desperation. He got talking to a lad and felt he may be helpful.He offered him the grand, which was what the reward had risen to. In a short while he turned up with the parrot under hie coat. It seems a family had bought it and the daughter had got very attached. However, the money was sufficient a lever. It now seems Finlay may well be the first parrot to complete a circumnavigation in few weeks time.Paul told me Phil made it to Lowestoft in the early hours, which is double good news.
If I had more time or came here again, I'd visit nearby Blakeney for wading birds, Walsingham and Warham camp for the history and Nelson's birthplace at Burnham Thorpe.The trip now looks like this on my trusty atlas. Tomorrow its Great Yarmouth or Lowestoft all being well.
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