Dear readers,

We have now reached UK mainland and are enjoying our last weeks of boat life!

We crossed the English channel amidst multiple cargo ships and arrived in the Solent in southern England. The Solent is probably the UK’s most reputed area for sailing as it is formed around a channel located between the isle of Wight and UK mainland and has multiple harbours and anchorage possibilities. The Solent also has very well preserved and beautiful landscapes with great pedestrian paths!

Navigating in the Solent was also great: there are no waves, there are plenty other sailboats to race with and there’s plenty of stuff to see on the coast on both sides 🙂 We’ve noticed that Misty Sea is once again one of the smallest boats around as sailing is quite a posh sport in the UK!

After leaving the Solent, we sailed to Dover. The fist things one sees when arriving to Dover from the sea are the huge white cliffs on either side of the city. As climbers, we obviously got pretty excited to climb those… But a short research showed that those cliffs are actually made of chalk and only climbable with crampons, ice axes and a lot of courage… We decided to stick to nice walks along those cliffs.

We’ve now spent a few days in Dover, which is in itself not such a nice city. But we seized the opportunity to start preparing the boat for the new owner and to visit Louis’ sister in London 🙂

Tomorrow, we’ll cross the English channel again to arrive in Calais or Dunkirk. We’ll then travel northwards to the Netherlands in the coming week for the very last part of our trip!