So where was I? Ah yes, porn. Well some sort of film anyway. We left the hedonistic highlights of Poole harbour and headed for the quiet countryside of the Newtown River on the Isle of Wight. Ah the tranquillity, of several hundred yachts and motorboats anchoring within a space about the size of your average family bath tub. The sights and sounds of panicky boat owners biting their tongues as everyone tried to stay calm but remained on edge waiting for the inevitable collisions. Some people are far too confident in their parking ability and far too sure of themselves. Accompanied by rudeness this means they are bestowed the honour of the title "numpty". There were many. We didn't let them spoil our weekend though and we had mucho nice times BBQing and sampling the delights of the local pub and farm shop, after growing inpatient waiting for high tide and deciding to punt our dingy over the sticky black mud to get to shore.
We suddenly realised at this point that our wedding was fast approaching and we had as yet failed to send out any invites. A fairly major oversight. As buying invites was expensive and getting on land anywhere to buy any decent ones and then finding somewhere to post them was even more time consuming we decided to take advantage of Jeff's skills and make a "wedding invitation website" and emailed most of our guest list with a link. Genius! By the time we had finished everyone had bugged out and we were getting bored so an hours chug later and we were back on the mainland up the Beaulieu River. What a find!! Gorgeous walk through the New Forest for me and Lunar and a really nice pub with good beer for Jeff, what more could we ask for. Back on Isabella and we where excited to receive our first few wedding invitation acceptances! Very exciting indeed
We had intended to stay upriver for a while as it was so pretty and quiet but internet was intermittent so at the very last minute we hoofed it over to Cowes instead. Cowes, not at all as expected. Perhaps we were there on a bad day but, well, not so impressed really. A bit, um "rough" looking, at least where we ended up mooring. The walk into town was not exactly picturesque and Jeff became rather paranoid about young roughians pilfering all our worldly possessions. Bit OTT but I empathised. To be fair the main street is quite quaint and interesting but there seemed to be no happy medium. Different areas were either full of quite dodgy looking, scruffy people who looked like they would sell their own child for a drink or full of the matching jacket, coordinated sun glass yachtie brigade "rah"ing it up. Neither were particularly appealing to be honest. We stayed a day or so for Jeff to work but were quite relieved to leave it behind and move, onward, upward and eastward to Chichester Harbour.
We didn't get to Chichester itself but we did spend some really lovely nights at various places in the harbour anchoring here and there, picking up a buoy and mooring alongside the pontoon at Emsworth. At one point a yacht anchored so close to us that Jeff thought of offering them coffee. In the ended he had to politely ask them to move. I think they thought he was mad! The walk to Bosham we did one day was just stunning, such a nice little village, like a chocolate box, and a very friendly ice cream man which is always nice
I think it was about here in the trip that Lunar started to have her special "lady" time and spent much of her time mournful and depressed and the rest trying to seduce Jeff's leg. Honestly! She is so wanton! Right well I am boring myself now so I shall end it here, glad to be alive and not blown into tiny pieces. That really would have put a crimp on the day.