WEST COUNTRY GOURMET CRUISE

The promise of a gastronomic tour of the South West coast persuades Gilbert Park's reluctant sailor wife to join him on a summer cruise with a difference

- Gilbert Park

Summer was here at last, the sun was forecast to shine for weeks and the boat was ready. My wife, Maire, is not too keen on boating but she is keen on good food. So how about combining my love of boating with her love of good food? The bribery worked, she agreed to several weeks of motor boating so long as every so often we tried a really good restaurant. The deal was done and in early June we slipped from our home at the top of Chichester Harbour on a late afternoon tide and sped off to Lymington. We don’t usually go to fancy restaurants on the night we arrive somewhere, so we settled on a great little Indian place called Rivaaz near the town hall.

The next day we agreed a long trip to Dartmouth. It all started well, with calm seas, until we were approaching Portland Bill, then it all changed! We all make mistakes and mine was not passage planning properly for this part of the trip. I should have taken the offshore route and stayed well clear of the tidal race but I gambled on the inshore route and lost! It got rough, so rough we abandoned going around the Bill at all and made for Portland Harbour instead, with the promise of finding a nice restaurant to make amends. Wrong again! Portland proved to be a gastronomic desert. After a long walk we eventually found a pub and opted for a decidedly average gammon and chips. It’s fair to say that at this point in the gourmet cruise my side of the deal was looking decidedly shaky.

Thankfully, the next day we had a mercifully uneventful cruise to Dartmouth but I still made sure that the first thing I did on arrival was to book a table for two at the Angel restaurant for the following night, a mere 50 metres from our boat’s berth at Town Quay.