As you may have noticed, I recently spent two weeks in North Wales. Today I will tell you the little story about how to get to Bardsey Island - the Island of the Bard, also known as the Island of 20.000 Saints. The sharp minded amongst you have most likely already figured this out. Of course there is always the helicopter or bridge option available; but not in this case. The boat is the only way.
The Bardsey boat caught in action from afar, taken with the amazing Nikon 900 magic zoom.
The name of the Man in charge is Colin, the son of Christine Evans who is a local poet. I introduced her and some of her poetry in my previous post "Bardsey - the Island of dark Horses".
This is the spot in Aberdaron, where we leave the mainland, as the Welsh say, yet for the continentals it's part of an Island as well ;)
waiting for the boat...
Take the opportunity and enjoy a look around :) It's a beautiful day!
And here comes Colin.
He disembarks the boat, enters the tractor, maneuvers around, hooks it up to the boat and pulls it out onto the land. All by himself with his own hands in a few minutes. This Man really knows what he is doing and I am quite impressed by the whole scene.
With the boat parked on land, he goes into the cabin to fetch his little booklet where he writes down the names of the passengers; he comes down the steps and reads the names out loud. In order to get on that list, one must call him on the phone and I am very happy to have a Welsh Local at hand. Only a very limited number of people fit on that boat and there is no other boat besides this one, so you can imagine that this is something that needs to be planned well in advance; also the success of the whole venture is highly dependent on fair weather and the weather is never a sure thing in North Wales. To actually be there waiting for your name to be called from that list, is a very lucky moment! (Of course I did not understand a thing because everybody there spoke Welsh :) )
And off we go!
When you look at that rock, what do you see?
They tell me that a lot of the Locals have not been to Bardsey because they can't swim and are afraid of the boat ride. I have to say, the water came in from all sides! The stormy ride takes about 20 minutes.
When we arrived at Bardsey, the first sound we hear besides the wind is the song of the seals. They are sunbathing on the rocks in the little cove and I learned that this is necessary for them to do in order to digest their food. Enjoy this little happening and turn your volume down - the wind is ear blowing ;) It also comes at an angle where it overwhelms the song of the seals, it can not be heard.
From there we spent 4 hours on the Island, and I am looking forward to writing further posts on this topic! For now, however, I will leave it at the boat trip.
Here we are waiting for Colin to come and take us back.
The tide was too low for the boat to come close enough to enter land, so we had to climb over the rocks to get to the boat. I found a nice shell on the way that I took with me. I also carried a piece of Bardsey sheep wool in my pocket and some stones.
I don't know why, but on the ride back nobody wore a life jacket any more. As if we had proven ourselves on the journey once before, we have mastered the waves and ridden the storm; and we have become the master of our own ship.
Also notice at this point that Colin had not collected the money yet! That was the last thing he did when everybody was already back with both feet on the "mainland".
When it was my turn to disembark the boat over the little latter he stood on the bottom and reached out his hand; he asked if I wanted help and I said thank you, no. Then he said, in very charming English, "Well, you don't like the looks of me, I can understand that", and we laughed.
If you like to meet Colin as a passenger on his boat to Bardsey you must hurry, for Colin wants to give it up and concentrate on his other, newly arising passion - his Bardsey Whisky, made and stored for ten years here
next to the square lighthouse.
But who is this Colin anyway?
He is the best storm rider I know!