I arrived in Shotley, Suffolk, last night about 9pm after an 11 hour passage from Chatham. Shotley is part of the Harwich ports area which includes Harwich itself and Felixstowe; the port is one of the largest in Europe. Shotley is the site of what used to HMS Ganges, a training establishment for boys joining the navy at 14. The iconic mast still stands although it is looking a bit worse for wear, as you can see from the photo. Google map coordinates are 51.960258, 1.276864

On the way out of Chatham, at a place called Hoo, I took the picture of the blue and white small ship below. Underneath all that superstructure is the hull of HMS Grey Goose, one of the steam gunboat flotilla that Peter Scott commanded and in which my dad served during the war.

I took a couple of pix of a container ship over on the other bank, one by night and one by day. The Felixstowe waterfront is impressive in the dark and never stops working.

Today I went over to Harwich, which is in Essex - the little ferry claims the distinction of being the only one in the world that connects Essex and Suffolk. The marketing people must have been struggling.

I spent the morning in historic Harwich, so historic that it has no shops, just lots of museums (all closed). But nonetheless it is an interesting place and well worth the stop over.

Tomorrow I plan to head up the coast towards Lowestoft or Great Yarmouth.