Crystal clear water, idyllic beaches, and mazes!

Wednesday
A fine day today, so another day for island hopping! We took the boat to St. Martin’s, and walked much of the island. When we reached the beautiful expanse of sand of Great Bay, we saw a guy in the water, without a wetsuit! Roger was determined to go in the sea one day this week, despite the cool temperatures, so he decided today was the day! I wasn’t in the least tempted, feeling comfortably warm in my long sleeve t-shirt, jeans and light fleece jacket! It has to be said, he didn’t stay in long - about 2 minutes max, but I do have photographic proof! The other guy, however, stayed in quite a while, watching a seal fairly close by! As we left the beach, however, we could see the clouds gathering, and before long we had to get the rain jackets out of the backpack. Luckily, the rain wasn’t heavy and didn’t last long, and we could see the rain clouds moving off across the sea to the Cornish mainland. However, when we were waiting to get on the boat to return to St. Mary’s late afternoon, the people in front of us were saying where they had been, the rain had been torrential, and even included some hail! We continued our walk along the northern coast towards the red and white Day mark (picture in extras). The Day Mark was built as an aid to navigation in 1683 by Thomas Ekins the first steward of the Godophin Family to live on the islands. It is the earliest surviving dated example of a beacon in the British Isles. It was painted white until 1822 but by 1833 had been painted red, and is now painted in bands of red and white. Our return path just happened to take us by a tea house, where we felt “obliged” to have a piece of cake with our cup of tea! We ended up walking over 23,000 steps, over 9 miles, before the day was out, so I don’t feel too guilty!