"The Best Things in Life are Free"

From Stargazer's anchorage, in Pin Mill, I can see the coppice (there are too few for it to be a forest) of masts in the compact, 80 berth, Woolverstone marina.

Woolverstone is where my cruising adventures began, aboard Missee Lee - my first cruising boat. A place of great nostalgic import for me. I haven't been back since setting sail for Poole one spring dawn in 2004....But I have always promised myself that I will return, one day, when the moment is right.

As I woke this morning, I knew that moment was today. In celebration of: Our two North Sea crossings; Our week roaming the countryside of Texel (which, I have learnt is pronounced Tessle by its inhabitants); And our week immersed in the vitality and history of Den Haag. In short, in celebration of a special cruise. The sail up river is our shortest passage of the cruise. One nautical mile.

Stargazer is soon alongside in the familiar to me, but new to her, parkland surroundings of Woolverstone.

A great crested grebe sculls by nonchalantly, as I drink my breakfast pot of coffee in the sun filled cockpit.

High on the bank beside us, a rabbit browses on lush green shoots. The sight brings on fresh pangs of hunger and I fetch the last of the nut cake from Stargazer's galley. Our gift from the kind Haven Meester of Scheveningen.

The tide is ebbing. An egret lands silently and stalks the shoreline. Staring into the shattered, shimmering, reflection of Stargazer's rig.

Up stream the Orwell bridge stands, straight legged, slender and sculptural. The curvature of the deck creates its own, more dramatic, horizon. In place of nature's more low key affair, which has been trampled underfoot by the buildings of Ipswich. 

A canvas on which the sun and drifting summer clouds combine to paint their patterns of light and shade. Ever shifting. An hypnotic tension created from the contrast between the transience of the patterns and the permanence of the structure.

I drift in and out of reverie. Recovering my energies in the calm of the setting. Allowing my body clock to regain its rhythm. Watching the boats come and go. Delighting in the discovery that Sally, in the marina office, will accept no payment for our stay.