Wednesday 5th July – Whale watching AGAIN?!

Russ had very kindly offered us an 8am lift to Barnstaple on the north side of the cape.  We met up with the 9am whale watching boat which cruised along the north side of the island on another beautiful day.

The boat was able to pick up quite a speed once out of the harbour with the aim of finding whales as rapidly as possible.  After an hour or so we were informed that there were a couple of Minke whales on the starboard side, however we didn’t hang around with them for long as there was the promise of humpbacks ahead.  On the way to find them we saw a sizeable pod of white sided Atlantic dolphin: 

None of the boats were having much joy in finding humpbacks and we were beginning to doubt that today would be the day.  But, finally, they found us a pair of female humpbacks that have been ‘hanging out’ for a few days together:

All too soon it was time to head back to base.  There had been perfect, glass-like conditions on the water today and I felt emotional that we had finally seen ‘our’ humpbacks.

Back at the marina for 1pm we were collected by Julie and Russ so we took them for coffee and sandwiches to say thanks before we went back to the house.

Tasha, David and the girls had already left to start the return to Concord and by all accounts the roads are awful! So, nothing for it, we might as well stay here instead of sitting in traffic!  We took a kayak over to the private beach with Russ and Julie and had a lovely swim.

The view back over to the house from the beach (Russ in a kayak)

View down the private beach

I wanted us to make at least some progress in beginning to get the RV sale-ready today so we started a couple of things – like getting all the dead bugs out of the light fittings and peeling all of our extra waterproofing off the shower to make it look as good as new – disgusting stuff!  We showered and finally hit the road at 540pm having said our farewells.

There was a bit of a queue getting off the island but nothing like we had been warned about.  It took just over two hours to get to Concord, Massachusetts and find Michael and Frances’ house.  With the girls in bed we had to be quiet around the house but we did 'the tour'.  We were too tired to do any more packing or sorting tonight.  This gave us the perfect excuse to spend one more 'last night' in our beloved RV.