The Hidden Gem Of London Sailing Courses

When I announced to a family friend that I was attending a two-day sailing course in Pimlico, his response was sceptical. 

"But what body of water would that be in? It can't be the Thames, that would be too busy and you'd probably catch Weil's Disease!"

Well, this was it, the Westminster Boating Base.

*this image isn't mine

Well, to be precise, we didn't sail right next to the Houses of Parliament; we were closer to Battersea Power Station and Grosvenor Bridge. But that's not really my point. My point is that we were sailing on the Thames! I, a beginner who'd only ever sailed in a shoebox on a dreary reservoir in Essex, sailed on a major thoroughfare yesterday and lived to tell the tale! Yup, no Weil's Disease (the Thames is apparently the cleanest metropolitan river in the world, according to our instructors) or being run over by ferries (almost all the larger boats we spotted were moored). I survived.

In many ways, it's strange that this place 1) has such minimal advertising and 2) is so unheard of! Why am I probably the first blogger in the world ever to rave about it on the World Wide Web? Don't other people see that there's nowhere else like it in London, or maybe even all the riverside cities in the world (correct me if I'm wrong; I haven't researched this "fact")? But I guess there is a good side to this in the lack of crowds (our group had only eight people, with two or three on each boat). To further prove this point, I also tried a popular kayaking centre in the Docklands, which had all the fancy websites and gushing admirers, but realistically, it's just packed with about seventy kids waiting around, half of whom end up without their desired place on the course. So maybe a small centre like WBB could do fine without any publicity. But I still think the location deserves it.

Anyway, enough of the publicity debate. Now onto what we actually did when we got out onto the water. Well, the format was actually a lot better and more educational than my previous sailing course, with everyone on the boat given about half an hour each to sail independently and get individual pointers from the instructor (who was on the boat, a fact which, although technically for safety reasons, I think was an improvement on the shoebox sailing course, where we were all thrust out onto a lake alone without a clue what to do). And the instruction itself was actually some of the most friendly and helpful I've ever received from these activity centre-type places, and that's probably a result of the lack of crowds meaning these often-long-suffering people aren't tormented by difficult kids day-in-day-out. Or maybe that's just me being cynical, and they're all actually genuinely nice people. We shall never know.

So I can now proudly say I achieved my RYA Stage 1 just downstream from Battersea Power Station. And I can cleat a halyard. The latter which, to my layman level of expertise, sounds a lot more impressive than the former.

-DP :)

PS We're going up to Scotland for a week in a couple of days, and the presence or absence of Wi-Fi is so far unconfirmed. But I haven't spontaneously combusted if I don't post for a week or so :).

Innocent Slow Worm Is Gruesomely Murdered

Above: The murdered slow worm, with a single gaping wound near its head

BREAKING NEWS! You heard it from us first, that an innocent slow worm has been found dead on an otherwise peaceful country road. The theory of murder was first suspected after a single stab wound was spotted near the creature's head, a coroner specialising in reptiles stated today.

The worm was found dead ("probably for hours", said the coroner) by a local family cycling on the Suffolk road yesterday afternoon. A spokesperson for the family stated, "they were obviously shocked, and were quick to call the slow worm police force, but not before their daughter had used images of the casualty for her Instagram page and blog.". He continued, "It seemed too good an opportunity for her to miss. I mean, it's not every day a 12-year-old gets to see a murdered slow worm!"

The circumstances of the murder are a matter of dispute. Locals were very much aware of the ongoing feud between the slow worm's family and local grass snakes, who subjected the worms to threats and abuse after discovering that the slow worm species bore more resemblance to lizards than to snakes. Another argument had also commenced a few weeks prior to the death between the slow worms and nearby field mice, over ownership of local fields. However, the coroner has ruled that the stab wound was far too deep to have been made by either species. At the time of writing, both the grass snakes and the field mice have yet to make a statement.

Above: A chalk line drawn by police around the victim's body.

Tributes have been flooding in on ReptileConnect.com for the legless victim, led by the slow worm's own family. The unnamed victim's grandmother, a resident of the area for the past fifty years, posted on the site: "What a devastating piece I read in Slow Worm Today earlier. A loss of an active youngster, a slow worm who liked the fast things in life."

A police search is underway.



Thanks for reading. I've just realised that that's the first fantasy/story post I've done without an introduction at the start! Welcome to the new Dramatis Persona story-post format! And if you're wondering, yes, we found a slow worm while out cycling, yes, I am the mentioned daughter, and, no, I cannot guarantee that this riveting murder story is true.
-DP :)

Some Random Updates About My Life That You May Be Interested In...

The title says it all. Here comes the list of radical, new-fangled happenings!


Yī 一  The reason why today I am counting my list in Chinese is not because I felt like being exotic, but because guess what? I was in Shanghai for the last two weeks! And also I finally have a good excuse for not blogging: I've read that all the popular social networks like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are blocked in China, and it would make sense that Blogger is too; it kept telling me that the connection was lost, and only on blogs. Therefore, this long overdue post is dedicated to updates about my two weeks in a foreign land. Enjoy!


Liǎng 两 But what exactly was I doing in Shanghai? Well, not the usual city break, as you were all probably presuming. Instead, I was at *drum roll please* the That's Mandarin Shanghai summer camp! Basically, it consists of language study in the morning, and then either field trips (ours was to an art museum which, despite my mum's best efforts, we've not been able to discover the name of), art activities (I am pretty proud of my Beijing opera mask and my Chinese ink painting of Taylor Swift) and cultural activities (a pretentious term for learning Chinese songs, playing Chinese games and the like). I make it sound way less exciting than it is, but it's a nice change from the week-long PGL-type adventure camps that are so common in England, and there was a huge diversity of people from all around the world, who I surely would have never met otherwise. And I guess I'll be super prepared for school Chinese class in September ;).


Sān 三 My summer camp was a day camp, so like regular school back at home, it finished at four, which gave ample opportunity for independent sightseeing during the afternoon. This is when we saw the major sights in the city, as the two weekends we had we reserved for longer day trips. It was hard to choose a favourite of them, but I thought that simply because they are the most famous sights in Shanghai, I'd show you my pictures of the Bund, a riverside road of colonial era architecture, and the Oriental Pearl TV Tower.

This is the most famous building on the Bund, the Fairmont Peace Hotel. A popular hotel in the 30s, then called the Cathay Hotel, now the building has finally been renovated by the Fairmont group back into a hotel, giving the hotel and the whole Bund the same 30s glamour, once again.

My heavily Instagram-filtered view across the river to the instantly recognisable Oriental Pearl TV Tower. We climbed this on the very last afternoon in Shanghai and let me tell you, it was thronged. Crowds of people on the lift, crowds of people on the viewing platforms, crowds of people at the dumpling-filled revolving restaurant...basically crowds everywhere! It's a good thing to do just to say that you've climbed the Oriental Pearl, but don't expect it to be the highlight of your trip. There's also a handy scam that makes you pay twice to visit the same museum, and prevents you going to the top viewing platform unless you do :/. On the whole, a bit of a disappointment.

Sì 四  Fun as some of them were (my favourite, looking around a traditional Chinese house, unfortunately didn't allow photography), the evening trips we took ultimately only lasted a few hours, so it was the day trips on the weekends that we got the most value out of. These trips included a visit to the pretty canal town of Suzhou, where we  had the joyful experiences of taking a gondola-like boat along the canals and a "motorbike taxi" back to the station...

The view from our canal boat

However, the prize for the weirdest place we visited in Shanghai has to go to the Shanghai Sculpture Park. It advertised itself as having a lake to swim in, but said lake turned out to be this...

Yes, an inviting beach, but the only people willing to swim were the sculptures :/

The park did make up for the bleak lake in other fun stuffies, including this bizarre hilly trampoline. And also a lot of fountains and paddling pools, fortunately not as dreary-looking as the lake.

 However, the sculptures were obviously the main attraction here, and the unique, varying works seemed effortlessly fitted to their surroundings. For example, the poles above are positioned on a pier, creating reflections of all the brilliant hilly scenery around them (you can't tell in the picture, but they are spinning too, creating more distorted reflections). The hunched cat is less suited to its surroundings, but it's an interesting idea to portray a cat in a similar posture as an elderly human. 

Overall, good art here, but please, next time, advertise the lake as what it is (pretty but unswimmable)! 


Wǔ 五 A non-Shanghai related update now, I just wanted to say that it may look like I was reading Code Name Verity for a very long time, but I read two other books during my trip to Shanghai (but wasn't able to upload the progress on the blog, because of the blockage), Chinese Cinderella by Adeline Yen Mah and Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell. I'll probably review either or both of them soon, if I don't have much to blog about. So there's that to look forward to :).


And that is what has been going on for me in the last couple of weeks!
-DP :)