Maeve's treasures

14.6C. Very mild. Windy, especially at the shore. Approx 20mph. Mostly dull and damp.

Very much enjoyed Yotam Ottolenghi's program last night on More 4. Cooking and exciting Moroccan locations.

Maeve the Deerhound and I went for our walk after lunch when there seemed to be a brighter spell blowing in from the South. We walked down the road to the shore today, turning left and heading along the cycle path to get to the gate in the field where we can access the level crossing to the beach. As we approached the beach it was clear that the tide was very high with waves being blown into the shore by the Southerly wind. I just looked up the high tide time online and it was 13.38 for Carnoustie. Maeve and I had reached the beach minutes after high tide. We could see that the waves had been into the dune grass and in places we only had one or two feet of beach to walk along towards the Fishermen's huts. Maeve had fun dodging the waves sweeping up the slope in the sand and I almost immediately spotted a nicely rounded light green piece of Sea Glass. I hadn't expected to see any with such a high tide and there was no more to be seen as far as the huts.

We went up through the dunes at the huts and saw that the owner of Shamara II was working at the bow of his boat. He appeared to be making a repair to a band of metal that is fixed on top of the fibreglass round the bow. He had a small generator running for power and the metal band was clamped in place. He had a drill ready to work with.

Maeve and I walked along to the other end of the area in front of the huts to watch the action in the water. There were what appeared to be hundreds of gulls, mostly black headed gulls, in the surf and looking like they were jumping over each wave that came into shore. They were never still or just sitting on the water. The edge of the beach was thick with seaweed to I have to assume there were good pickings to be had at the top of the tide. More menacingly was a group of black backed gulls standing at the edge of the beach watching.

We decided to carry on along the beach towards the car park rather than walk by the cottages. There was more beach to walk on at that point, but the waves had torn big gouges out of the sand so we walked along near the dunes. The beach is looking very storm tossed again.

As we walked along I could see some stones gathered on the sand next to the boat that has been lying on the beach past the car park. I decided to go and have a look just in case anything interesting had been washed up. On the near side of the boat there were lots of colourful stones but no Sea Glass and I was about to head off when Maeve decided to wander round to the other side. Clever Maeve ... she found the treasures I brought home and blipped for today.

Later I cleaned lots of salt spray off my glasses and was very glad that I had decided to keep my camera in my pocket and bring the found things home to blip :-)