After four days sailing in less water than it takes to drown  a pint I was beginning to get used to life in the shallow lane. I had already got my east coast stripes back by running aground in the Walton Backwaters and had got lost in the faceless shores of the Wallet  channel where every buoy looks identical. An ancient Garmin which neither of us quite remembered how to use had so engrossed the skipper and distracted me that we suddenly realised that visibility had reduced to half what it was ten minutes ago and we were well off course. We got back to basics, sailed to the nearest can and read the label… now we knew where we were. A quick look at the chart and a peek through the hand held compass and we were back on track. How so unlike our own dear Clyde where the course marks are 1000 feet high!
The Walton Backwaters are sadly no longer quite so secret with a busy marina where the Swallows had once splached ashore from Horsey Island but a splendid reception awaited us with a good meal, a great barbecue area and a helpful marina manager all making it an enjoyable stay.
A grounding and a nav malfunction later  saw us at Heybridge Basin where the Dutch were in command of locking, Lelystad’s best sailors were on hand to pack us into the lock, the Ship Inn provided a fine pint or three and a decent meal. A unique experience for me was going to Tesco by dinghy and walking in with  a lifejacket on carrying a petrol can which I managed to hide in my rucksack before I got jumped on by security!
The cream of the trip was seeing Nixi, a Honey Bee I feared may have been lost, at Heybridge.  In the same ownership for the past twenty two years, she looked in fine fettle with the blue ensign of the Royal Harwich on her stern. I enjoyed a welcome mug of tea and a nostalgic break on her in the basin.
Our return north was invigorating with a freshening force five SSE and a falling tide blasting us back to Shotley in a little over five hours, our lightweight Pegasus felt like a dinghy and behaving like one when a momentary loss of concentration resulted in a gybe pinning the skipper to starboard before I made it out of the cabin.
We ended our week with a superb meal at Woolverston Marina, precursored by two fine pints at Adnams at the Butt and Oyster and epiloged by some fine wine aboard a 36ft Southery whose owner took pity on a couple of old salts who looked in need of some decent booze.