Jo and I have just spent a week in a boat house on about a mile down the estuary from Kingsbridge. Legally it is a ria not an estuary but practically it is the same.
We took our inflatable canoe with us. Being on Salcombe Harbour you need a licence so we popped down to the harbour office where a nice lady said for a few days canoeing we didn't need one.
We took three trips out at around high tide each time. The first was right across the estuary which was fun with the wind and waves.
This is the view from the balcony of the boat house nearing low tide.
This is what it looked like form the canoe at high tide.
And this is our boat house.
The second trip was down river a bit and up another creek and underneath the road bridge. again we went near the high tide so there was little flow through the bridge arches. It started to rain on the way back!
The third trip was to Kingsbridge itself, we arrived on a slipway took the boat out of the water and went for an ice cream. When we arrived back at the canoe we found the the left hand air bag was deflating a bit. Now the right answer was walk home and get the pump we did the wrong one and paddled home. It got there but we did hug the bank for safety. We also have life jackets and the boat has three bags so it wouldn't actually sink but might have been a bit hard to paddle half full of water.
We moored the canoe out side the bedroom window.
On the last day we arrived back to find that the water was right up to the house. There was a little slip way though which we could use to get to the steps. You can see it here from our bedroom window.
It was great fun but we think we might take Jo's proper Canadian next time it is more seaworthy.
Cheers Graham
