Summer visitors

There are events marking certain times of the year, and several of them surfaced today. For a start, it was warm enough this morning that  I was able to wear a cotton jacket to church without freezing - first time this year.The jacket is an old favourite, made in Skye to order when I saw an experimental one based on the fisherman's smocks that were the firm's customary product. I must have had it for over fifteen years. 

Another summer feature is the return of the visitors to church, a little later than the swallows but just as welcome. Today it was a priest on holiday with his wife and their very large, very docile Airedale terrier which came to the service with them. They were the very best kind of visitors, enjoying great chat in the car park afterwards while the dog tried to get back into the church, settling for lying in the porch in the shade when he wasn't able to . 

My blip shows another kind of visitor, moored offshore of Toward Sailing Club this afternoon. I'm always interested in ships that don't show up on my ship finder app, but this one looked extraordinary. Through the joys of Facebook I've now found out that she's the Ragnar, a £59M luxury yacht owned by an ex-KGB Russian millionaire but formerly an ice-breaker. One report my informants sent  me said this: Ragnar has an Airbus EC145 helicopter (and helipad) that can drop guests on a snowy glacier for heli-skiing, a three-person submersible for adventures in Arctic waters and snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles for exploration on land. The yacht is one of the first to be rated as Ice Class 1A Super, which means it can operate in temperatures as low as -31 degrees Fahrenheit at a speed of four knots, in ice that is 20 inches thick. Ragnar’s engines and electric pods are designed to churn ice as it navigates ice channels. Her range is well beyond 6,000 nautical miles. If you fancy it, you need to reckon on a crew of 16 ... We thought at the time that the owner was perhaps visiting the Russian owners of Knockdow House, up the road - or is this a recent purchase?

Apart from that interesting distraction, we had a lovely, if fairly brief, walk along the loch side in warm sunshine, between the luxuriant verges that have become such a feature of this summer. I've got my fingers crossed that the policy of not cutting the verges back will hold till the autumn, because right now they're tall with cow parsley and honeysuckle and alive with bees. 

Oh - my sermon went fine, by the way. It was about the treatment of women in society, basically - if you're not a Piskie, can you work out what the gospel story was?

Extras of the verge and some of its smaller, more colourful components.