Very lazy day until we get on our bikes at 4pm to cycle a mile down into Blakeney Quay and pick up tickets for our boat trip. The guy warns us that there haven’t been many seals around in the last few weeks so we may be in for a disappointing trip.

We then have to cycle 1.5 miles along the road to Morston Quay to pick up the boat. We discover that Blakeney Quay silted up about eight years ago so all the boats had to move up the coast.

We’re a little early so have a cuppa and then make our way out to the boat along various wooden bridges and walkways. All we can see at this point is mud and not much water but the tide starts coming in fast about twenty minutes before departure time.

We load up and are the first boat out. There’s still more mud than water in the channel so the guy piloting the boat takes it slow.

We’ve been on the boat only about 15minutes when he takes us to a shingle bank with a group of common seals basking in the heat of the day. They are all different colours from white to speckled dark grey depending on how long they’d been out of the water. They look very ungainly out of the water seeming to rock themselves from front to back to move around. The pilot says this is the most he’s seen here for weeks so we are lucky!

We get a great view of them and more seals swimming around us including a large grey seal swimming.

He then takes us further out and we are lucky to see lots of groups of seals with their heads out of the water and their sad soleful eyes.

On the way back the grey seal has beached itself further up the shingle bank. It’s been a fab trip.

We have a drink in the beer garden of the Anchor pub before the cycle back up a long hill and a quiet night in.