Personal Blog of Ellen MacArthur

It’s been a very full-on few weeks for us, what with Skandia Cowes Week, and then a few days of escaping!

Cowes Week was fantastic for us with loads of guests, loads of sailing, and an incredible iShares Cup.

Since Cowes Week it’s been great to take a few days off and get out and about. I headed west to Devon and Cornwall and spent some time seeing friends. It’s easy to forget just how beautiful the countryside is in the UK. What with Dartmoor, the farmland and the beautiful coastal harbours.

It’s easy also to forget the history of these places, what with the silted up rivers and estuaries that used to be the main ports in the country for tin and other raw materials. It just makes you realise how much the world has changed.

Another place that I visited was Wookey Hole. Strange name I know, but it was a series of interlinking caves with the river Axe running through them. The history there was incredible too - not only had they found human remains dating back 15,000 years, but there were also strange stories of an old lady living in the caves with her goats and hyena’s which lived in smaller caves in the cliffs. It seems bizarre to think that there were woolly mammoths living in Somerset!

What is also interesting there is the paper mill, which sits in the same valley as the caves, and was built there as the water running out of the caves was incredibly pure, and fantastic for paper. It is the last paper mill to exist in this country, and was fantastic to look around. There were people making the paper as individual sheets right before your eyes, and I had no idea that you can make paper out of hemp, cotton or a pair of jeans! Fascinating stuff - again something that makes you realise what is possible in a world where we appear sometimes to have forgotten the lessons of the past.