Abundant colour

13.2C and feeling very mild in the middle of the day. Everything is soggy but it was so good to have some blue sky!

Maeve the Deerhound and I went for our walk after lunch. We took our usual route up the road to the church and down the field with the bridle path despite knowing it would be a bit soggy. Sure enough there was a lot of water lying in the field, but we were rewarded with another Roe deer sighting. Similar to last time the deer noticed us and headed across the field and disappeared into the trees on the far side.

We carried on towards the shore, doing our best to avoid walking in the ruts and low spots, and stopped once or twice to get some pictures. Down to the cycle path and through the field small field with the sheep then over the level crossing. Tide was out today and there was lots of hard wet sand to walk on. Plenty of space to for me to avoid the seaweed and for Maeve to do the opposite and sniff most of it. I did notice that the dune grasses on the beach side were lying flat on the sand and wondered if the tides have been getting right up into the dunes. As we approached the Fishermen's huts I could see that 'Wee Peem' had been washed round through 90 degrees and was lying parallel to the back of the beach with its mooring rope stretched taut. The sand on the two slopes the tractors use to go up and down to the beach was very smooth and there was a real edge at the bottom of the slope where the receding waves had been pulling at the sand. The tides must have been very high!

I did see one man in his hut, but it was very quiet and we took some time to look around and see what had changed. Lots of fishing gear has been stowed for the winter, but even more things seem to be lying here and there in piles. 'Valhalla VI' has been pulled up off the beach but hasn't been towed along to sit outside the owner's hut. It turned out to be one of those days when I liked a number of the shots I got so the blip is a montage colourful things :-)

Later I powered up the Netbook and updated files and applications and let it run Windows update, all ready for our holiday even though I expect to be back blipping as we had to do in May when we were over in the West.