Padstow - or is it Rick Steinville?

Padstow is a picture postcard pretty little port - there is an outer Fishing Boat Harbour, and the Inner Basin with a tidal gate to maintain a depth of just over 3m in the inner basin.

 Our first mooring was an alongside berth, right in the town centre.  The only problem with this was the feeling that we were the goldfish in the bowl - the weather was fantastic, and Padstow is very busy!

 Zilla was a bit of a crowd puller, and enjoyed the attention she received strutting her stuff round the boat. As we were planning to leave the boat in order to visit Bude with Nick and Sally we  over ruled Zilla's vote to stay put, and moved the boat onto a pontoon - not without some difficulty due to the confined space and the fact the boat is encased with netting to stop Zilla falling off!

Another chance to see the photo of Sprigs trying  to get a line on the mooring buoy without going for a swim - there was not enough room to pick the buoy up from the stern of the boat, and no pick up buoy on it.

 Our new position on the pontoon was at least right in the middle of the goldfish bowl, and rather more shielded from the public gaze.

 The tidal gate:  It is rotated into position a couple of hours before high water and becomes a footpath - not come across one quite like this on our trip round the country so far!


Padstow is the home of Rick Stein - There is The Sea Food Restaurant (the posh one), the St Petroc's Hotel / Bistro, The Rick Stein Cafe and Stein's Fish and Chips.  There is also the Rick Stein Deli, Padstow Sea Food School, Stein's Patisserie, Stein's Gift Shop and Stein's various  B & B's (fish for breakfast?)......there are also quite a lot of other rather good shopping opportunities there.  In case you venture out of town, he also owns The Cornish Arms Pub in St Merryn.  We tested out the Fish and Chippie (excellent) and the Pub - equally excellent.

The Fishing Boat Harbour - presumably the supply line for Rick Stein's Restaurants!


Padstow Harbour entrance dries out and is guarded by the notorious Doom Bar, which also happens to be the name of the Beer produced across the river in Rock.


Our entry into Padstow had been an interesting experience - we struggled to find the channel marker buoys and found the transit difficult to identify. The channel was being dredged - this provided a whole new take on fishing - not sure if the man was just netting the fish as they were spat out by the dredger, or just liked to add a bit more excitement to his fishing experience!

 As for the channel marker buoys, all became clear at low tide.

Doom Bar

View across Doom Bar up the River Camel - Padstow on the right, Rock on the left.

 And the plan:  To venture back across Doom Bar and head for the Isles of Scilly