Tall Ships sail from Falmouth

Sad to say that I didn't visit Falmouth last week where the town was hosting the preparations and start of the Tall Ship Race to Funchal in Madeira. It is a two stage race stopping in Portugal before crossing to Madeira. As I wasn't there to witness the spectacle it makes sense I think to put in a link here to an extensive feature about it on the BBC Cornwall website. I have to say that the Beeb normally excel on their websites - I find them very easy to navigate around and they generally have some useful links as well. Not so good from my point of view is the website of the Western Morning News, it seems to take for ever to load and when I get there I find it a bit of a miss-mash. It's partly what you are used to I suppose but the BBC sites to me are so user friendly.

Falmouth in my opinion is the perfect place for such an event. Certainly a number of nations were participating and by all accounts the town was a very happy and animated place during the course of the regatta. Estimates suggest that something like 130,000 people watched the start of the race and a good many of these were massed on the cliff at Pendennis Castle to watch the ships sail away. I think that if I had driven down there on Saturday I would have been tempted to go to the lovely Roseland Peninsula, do some walking with the aim of arriving at Zone Point or St Anthony Head to secure a vantage point. But anyway I didn't so no point in thinking about "might haves"! The fundamental thing here is that the whole event proved to be a terrific success.

Well done Falmouth!

Cruise liners cancelling visits to Falmouth

During the last year or two there has been some encouragement to get cruise ships to visit our south coast ports with all the economic spin-offs that would follow. However 'Jewel of the Seas' is the third example of a cruise ship that has cancelled a stopover at Falmouth and in this instance will be going to Cherbourg instead. Apparently the reason given for the change of heart is that the said ship has to anchor out in the harbour and get people ashore by tender. This I gather is not popular with passengers and poses some logistical problems.

I prefer to be upbeat if possible so this is a good moment to mention the fact that Falmouth will be hosting the 'Funchal 500 Tall Ships Regatta' from 10 - 13 September. The website for the event is here. It promises to be quite spectacular and comes at the right time extending the summer season a bit for the town.