Mellow in the mists ...*

Today has been strangely strenuous - or is it simply that my morning Pilates class taxed muscles that I've not been using enough? All these core exercises, which I do with a will because of the benefit to the back but which leave me sore in places I didn't even know I had ... But the class passed in a flash, with much good-humoured banter on the way out. It's totally therapeutic.

Despite this physical activity, I found myself in mid-afternoon asking, almost without meaning to, if we were going to go out. The mist has been hanging damply around all day, and it didn't look particularly inviting, but half an hour later we were marching up the farm road at the Ardyne in thickening drizzle, hoods up for the first time in ages, surrounded by the intense smells of countryside that has been dry for over a week and is now glistening with wet cobwebs. Himself isn't up to walking far at the moment (think sacroiliac displacement and resulting piriformis stiffness) so I marched off along the back of the beach for an extra bit of exercise (why? madness?) 

Actually it was glorious. The rain had stopped, and some bits of mist were thinning enough to allow pale glimpses of the sun. The tide was out, the sea completely flat - just as it was yesterday. I took so many photos that I really wanted to plaster them all on here, but I've made a collage extra with the shore and the ghostly boats (again) - and a curlew, if you look carefully at the water's edge - as well as some of the gorgeous autumn leaves and brambles along the road, and a bush bejewelled with watery cobweb. My main photo, however, was taken from the car on the way home, because I loved the way the hill above the shore road through the Bullwood became a mysterious crag in the clouds.

* Keats, of course