97.3 MILE ROUND TRIP

I hold my hand up, I did not take this photo. No indeed. I set off for work early this morning as I had lots of payroll to run, end of the month and all that. Trundling through it and I get a phone call from G. He is now semi-retired and had gone off birding on his "retirement day". He was at Heysham harbour. He was outside of his car and the keys, mobile phone, binoculars (OMG), flask of coffee, lunch - lovingly prepared by me, newspaper, comb, hanky, were inside the car. And the car had "locked itself". I 'phoned the car rescue people and they said, fine, they could deal with that but G would have to sign a damage disclaimer before they tried to open the door. I phoned the very nice man in the corner store where G was lurking to pass on the information. G was missing, having been told by a passer-by that there was a locksmith who lived just round the corner. G phoned back, the locksmith said there was no way anyone would get into his car easily, so when I relayed the message from the car rescue people he was not happy with that either.

So ......... a 97.3 mile round trip, through torrential rain, following HGVs, tractors, caravans (it's half-term), floods, police speed cameras, Micra drivers wearing flat caps, 4-wheel drives on my bumper, now that's a certain way for me to stick to the speed limit ..........

And I'm there having my lunch at the sea-side; the wind rushing through my hair, the salt spray splattering my hastily grabbed lunch of a cheese roll from my desk, and G, bless him, didn't ask why it had taken me so long. But while he had waited for me, he had trotted along the harbour wall and seen the Firecrest which had just put in an appearance, so he was happy.

After I had passed over the spare car key to G and we had spent those few brief encounter moments at Heysham harbour, I headed back to Skipton and to work, and he headed off to Leighton Moss RSPB. That's where this photo comes in, I didn't take it, G did, while they were setting up Autumn Watch at Leighton Moss. He would have preferred me to put on his photo (pretty good actually) of a Marsh Harrier, but I think he has tested my equilibrium far enough today.