Blakeney to Cley Windmill on a spring tide

Blakeney Quay in August is not a quiet place. Cars nose for spaces, crab lines dangle off the wall, and the boats sit in a companionable jumble waiting for the water to come back to them.

Two hundred yards out, none of that exists.

That is more or less the whole proposition. Henry took a family of four out from Blakeney yesterday — two adults, two children, down from Surrey — on the first trip we have run from the Quay this summer.

Blakeney Quay was absolutely heaving. But once out in the water you get this completely different perspective of Cley Windmill, Blakeney Harbour.

The boat

The boat for the day was Mabel, built in 1972 — a Norfolk beach boat, clinker built, made for this coast specifically. Not adapted for it, not a general-purpose hull that happens to cope. Designed around the shallow water, the shingle and the short steep sea you get here.

It's a Norfolk beach boat, clinker built, made for fishing just offshore. And we've got a beautiful lug rig on this little beach boat.

A lug rig is about as simple as sailing gets: one sail, hauled up on a spar, no rigging to speak of. It is the arrangement that worked for men launching off a shingle beach at four in the morning, and it works just as well for a family who have never sailed before, because there is very little to go wrong and everything is visible.

The engine is electric, and it is there to drift through the creeks. That is the whole reason for it. No diesel note, no fumes, no vibration through the hull — so you can move up a narrow channel without announcing yourself, and the birds carry on doing what they were doing. Quiet is why you get close to things.

The reason this trip is rare

People sometimes ask why we cannot simply run this at eleven every morning. The answer is that the route to Cley does not exist most of the time.

The channel needs a big tide underneath it. This sail went on 3.3 metres at Blakeney Quay — and the highest this coast gets is only around 3.5, a mark that is in reach for roughly three months of the year and out of it for the other nine. Outside that window the water simply does not rise far enough, whatever the weather is doing and however much anybody would like it to.

So it is not a scheduling matter. For most of the calendar the route is not there.

Which is worth saying plainly, because it is the whole character of the trip. This is not a boat ride that happens to go somewhere pretty. It is a route that opens for a few hours at a time, a handful of times a year, and closes again behind you.

Departure was two hours before high water — enough depth in the narrow stretch, and a rising tide still underneath you, which is the margin you want if anything needs rethinking.

Out through the Pit, past the Watch House, and onto a buoy first — everyone settled and safe before the sail goes anywhere near the top of the mast. Then the lug rig up, and a sail on a light westerly through the tight channel towards Cley.

Coming in, the sail comes down and the last stretch is under power, working against the last of the flood.

We had to race against the tide a little bit, because by that stage it was high tide.

Breakfast at Cley

Cley Windmill is one of the most photographed buildings in Norfolk, and almost everyone sees it from the road. Arriving by water, on the tide, with the marsh laid flat around it, is an entirely different thing.

I made a nice little area on Cley Harbour where I cooked bacon and eggs in a cast iron frying pan. Made them a fresh coffee, tea. They had a walk round the harbour.

The stop is timed to the top of the tide, so there is an hour or so before the water starts going the other way and the boat has to leave with it.

Home on the ebb

The westerly that carried them out had to be motored against on the way home, though by then it had softened. And it was hot — hot enough that the channel stopped looking like scenery and started looking like an invitation.

We stopped halfway in Cley Channel and had a swim. They got in, had a beautiful cooling swim, because it was so hot.

Back alongside at Blakeney just as the water was going. Three and a half hours, start to finish.

What was about

Little egrets, white against the mud. Terns working the channel — folding up and dropping into the water to feed, over and over. Gulls, in numbers, as always.

And the one that did not show. There is a barn owl that hunts this channel, and Henry has watched it quartering the marsh from the boat before now. Not yesterday. That is the arrangement with wild things — you get what is there on the day, which is the reason to come back.

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It is a good shape for a family: long enough to feel like a proper voyage, short enough that nobody runs out of patience, with a meal in the middle and a swim on the way home. The children steer. The adults stop checking their phones, because there is nothing to check.

Sailing it yourself

This is one of our beach boat sails, and it can be booked through the site. Mabel takes a small group, which is what makes it work as a family trip — nobody is a passenger for long.

The one thing to know before you look at dates: there are not many of them. The channel needs upwards of 3.3 metres at Blakeney Quay, tides that size are only about for three months of the year, and within that the departure time shifts through the day with the water. So the slots are few and they look irregular. That is not us being awkward — it is the water, and it is also the reason the trip is worth doing.

See available dates for our beach boat sails