Another 9.30am get up on Sunday - with the same streaming sunlight but instead of getting up early to get off the island, I got up early to do some work (boo). John read in the conservatory and photographed frogs in the garden’s pond while I worked and the plan was that I’d finish at lunchtime so we could go into the village to get something to eat at a cafe or the Crown & Anchor pub. But when the time came, we weren’t hungry so we checked what time the cafes closed (5pm-ish) then retreated away from the crowds over the sand dunes near the start of the causeway to the North Shore to build up an appetite.

It was about half a mile over the dunes but thankfully the wind had finally died down so we didn’t go blind from sand blowing around. In fact, Sunday was a beautiful day - sunshine but enough breeze to stop it being too hot. In the dunes, there is a commemorative bench near the remains of a 9th century village so we sat there for a little while before hitting the beach. John was a bit meh about going to another beach since we’d been to the causeway area a couple of times and to the rocky harbour on the south shore but the North Shore was by far the best beach we’d gone to on the island. Nearer the mainline, the beach was all golden sands and crashing blue waves but we didn’t stay at that end for long - preferring the rocky rockpools of further east. The rockpools were AWESOME. We saw a big giant crab (dead though) and lots of little crabs and little starfish and hermit crabs and fish and shrimp and loads of limpets and birds and cool eroded rock formations and big piles of driftwood and John gave me a pointing stick and a stone and it was great. We stayed there for longer than intended - John photographing creatures and me watching the waves until the incoming tide got my jeans wet - then John sat on the dry pebbles at the top of the beach while I collected more interesting wood and stone specimens for my collection.

Eventually we headed back to the cottage and realised we’d been out in the sun much longer than we had intended (oh such pink shoulders for me). Having missed the cafes, we just had more soup and bread in the garden (it seemed strange eating hot soup in the glorious warm sunshine) then read/fiddled into the evening. We tidied the cottage (in advance of leaving the next morning) and had a late, candlelight mushroom risotto in the conservatory. T’was all very nice.

Pictures (click for bigger versions)

• Top: the very nice beachy bit of the North Shore from the bench in the dunes.
• Lower: the cottage’s front garden at sunset.