Philipp makes a splash on his first day!

Philipp Stohrer (18) from Ulm near Stuttgart will be spending the next four weeks at Harbour Sports Paignton as a business intern. Philipp’s placement has been arranged by The Training Partnership in Torquay. Needless to say his English is perfect!

Philipp lists his sporting interests as football, knee boarding, personal fitness and, yes you’ve guessed it, kayaking!

Fairy Cove on Good Friday - breathing sea air!

The picture is from an old postcard that shows Paignton’s Fairy Cove at it’s very best! At this time of year parking is a little limited on the harbour (although you can still park for twenty minutes in the marked slots outside our shop) and so I parked the van up on Cliff Road.

My walk to the shop took me down the steps to Fairy Cove and to the sandy beach that had been recently washed by the dropping tide. I love this beach and breathing in the sea air this morning was such a spiritual lift!

Sadly this beach has suffered recently because the Council have allowed the positioning of two ugly containers for the slaughter of crab near the steps from the harbour to Fairy Cove. Family groups last summer were intimidated by the mess and noise. We did have one amusing anecdote to report when the comments made by the factory foreign workers there to a young lady who responded in their own language, knocking them off their lewd pedestal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I did have a conversation with Carolyn Custerson (English Riviera Tourism Company's Chief Executive) yesterday about where we were going with tourism in relation to Paignton Harbour and Fairy Cove. The crab killing containers were a temporary measure a year or so ago whilst their fire damaged factory was rebuilt and refitted. But now another planning application has been posted to keep the wretched things here! That can’t be right.

Anyway, enough of all that! We have a new dive school on the harbour and they will be using Fairy Cove for training and filming. How exciting is that? It’s also interesting how many people take our kayaks out and paddle around to Fairy Cove for the first stop on their kayaking journey along the Geo Park coast!

Smell that sea air today! Stunning stuff!

frank