Waverley leaves Clevedon Pier

Any excuse for a bike ride, and as the world's last seagoing paddle steamer it's not often I'm going to get a shot like this - even in a slightly uninspiring sea mist! 

So it was off to Clevedon on Morrigan to wait and people watch as the punters, tickets gripped tightly against the sea breeze, gathered on the pier. Then all of a sudden there she was; coming in from an unexpected direction and drawing up to the pier. 

It took the best part of half an hour to transfer people from the ship to the pier, and then the people from the pier to the ship, before I got the chance of a shot as she paddled off. Arriving and leaving both, she was so full of people I was reminded again of sardines.

Two icons of British engineering; Waverley built in 1946 and Clevedon Pier built in the 1860's. Then this icon of the 1960's climbed aboard his icon of the twenty-first century to ride home.