Sunday 4 April 2010

A rake about on the beach....


We usually make our middle Sunday here a lazy day - the islanders mostly still consider Sunday very much a day of rest and we've always felt that it's a good thing to respect this and not go charging about all over the place. Accordingly, this morning started with a bit of a lie in, before a slow start to the day via several cups of tea and some sitting outside in the Sunshine. Alasdair popped by, firstly to warn us of the forecast for very high winds tomorrow (indeed, they are already battering the cottage as we speak, and the overnight freight ferry from Stornoway - Ullapool is already cancelled with, I suspect, more cancellations to follow on that front) and secondly to give us the new corner storage rack for the bathroom which needed putting together and fitting. We had a bit of  chat with him before he went off to see to the sheep and we settled down to the job of first re-stringing the clothes line and secondly, building that storage rack. A light lunch followed before we headed off just a few miles up the road to the island of Baleshare to see if we could find a beach for a bit of an amble along.....
Beachcombing up here can be great fun, and very absorbing, with all sorts of odds and ends being washed up - today though we found a mass of broken stoneware and pottery - all from around the start of the 20th century we think, so not that old but interesting nonetheless. More usefully however, we found plentiful signs of the presence of cockles, so Ben went back to the car for the buckets and a rake and we settled down to some foraging. They were not quite so easy to find as in our usual more favoured spot, but we still managed to collect enough to form the basis of a nice dinner tomorrow night.
Better news still is that Alastair and Elisabeth are back from England and the pub was open this evening.
Robyn
ps - additional photos from this trip are going onto my Flickr album - the link is to the right of this page.

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