Carra Tidings

After a frustrating motor to Klintholm – a great little harbour with a cool vibe: part boho, part holiday village and a commercial harbour. My father who had sailed here during his national service, would have only recognised the commercial harbour. Close by are the cliffs of Mons Klint – 70 million year old chalk cliffs raising 120m above sea level. We climbed down to the beach, to see the bright dramatic white cliffs – the shore line regularly reveals fossils. The water is the most incredible topaz colour, due to the chalk lying beneath the waves. Mags’ favourite occupation is collecting stones on beaches – regularly coming back with pocketfuls. So telling her there were fossils too, well that was the starting gun – head down she was in collecting mode. After a while, she had amassed quite a few fossil shaped stones and took them to the expert, who helped people identify what they have found and would give approval to remove them – sadly she had just a collection of stones. I wasn’t fossil collecting but trying to film my next Spielberg…. mind on angles, light, action … then one stone just said look at me….. so I picked it up…. A 70 million year old giant oyster….

The 15 min climb down to the beach, was now was a daunting climb up 489 vertical steps back up to the top, in the heat,  we were really relieved that the cycle back to the boat was all downhill. But we still felt that ice cream was a just reward. That evening there was a beautiful sunset – the sun appeared to turn the colour of molten metal, as it sank.

My father sailing past Mons Klint

Me sailing past 68 years later

The next day, we had an early start, sailing close to the base of the cliffs before setting our course for Sweden, and a cracking sail 9 hour sail to Ystad – made perfect by the cheese and tomato toasty Mags made. Ystad, as well as being home of Wallander, is popular location for boats heading to the Swedish East Coast. Leaving at 6am, we joined a flotilla of boats heading round the Swedish coast to the next port. It felt like a race to put out your beach towels on the sun loungers  (no prizes for guessing the nationality). The wind was light and from behind us. So not only was it a race – we were one of the few boats trying to sail and we could only eek out 3.5 knots. It was a race that we were going to lose. So instead, we decided to go closer to the wind and change our destination – which meant we had a great sail, at 6 knots and no one else was heading to Bornholm. It was a win win!