Fortieth Tea Break

And so the milestone 40th year on this earth is completed. As if you stick up two fingers to Father Time I’m up and out on the bike before breakfast, battling a headwind out to the Mangurstadh air traffic transmitter tower, which it turns out gave Mel enough time to blow up some 40th balloons and arrange the few presents taken away with us. 

After a breakfast of muffins, black pudding and poached egg, it was into the car to head to the end of the road at Mealasta, and a coastal walk we did part of a few years back, which ended in a little beach with some distinct otter paw prints. The coastline is stunning, and it was nice of an otter, however briefly, to appear in the water for my birthday (and for a couple of White-tailed Eagles to breeze lazily by into the headwind as we were almost back to the car). 

We found the same little beach, and indulged in a freezing paddle, before carrying on to a rather serenely sheltered meadow, site of a former croft, where we could look back on where we’d come, to the azure blue seas and golden beaches, while supping tea (and then some whisky from the hip flask).


As birthdays go, it was pretty damned good.