5 months in

Yesterday – Ady went off to Sandy’s. The kids and I dressed as pirates and headed down to the village to catch the post office open and talk like pirates 🙂 Lesley had dug out some stuff for Bonnie’s ear which will hopefully make a difference as it is now smelly and not very nice 🙁

We ‘arghed’ at the post office and various islanders who were around and then went to meet the ferry and arghed some more down at the pier. There is a film crew over at the moment taking shots for a gaelic film recreation that was shot here 25 years ago and they are doing an update. They are not at all sure what to make of any of us really so me and the kids saying ‘the ferry be coming now look ye’ to each other and threatening with plank walking probably didn’t help! 😆

Fliss and Sandy had *loads* come off the boat so we managed to load it all into the Pajero and took it round. We stopped for a cup of tea and collected Ady to come home for lunch. Ady then went off to do piermaster for the late boat while I knocked up some pizza and bread dough. We had been planning to go up Hallival with Mike to do some shearwater chick ringing but being worried about leaving Bonnie for so many hours meant we didn’t go and in the end neither did Mike.

Scarlett and I walked down to the village to get some tomatoe puree (which we then discovered we’d not really needed as I had some in the cupboard) and Mike came up. We had a nice evening eating pizza and chatting.

Today was the last Sheerwater boat trip of the season. We have been to every single one – I think it was only last week it didn’t run, since we arrived back in May. That has been a real unexpected bonus of living here, particularly the early ones when it was free too, but £10 is a very small price to pay for the experience we have each week – we love it :). I made a cake and did some snickerdoodles too while the oven and genny were on and we walked down to the car, collected Mike and Ady on the way and were there. Kate & Ian and Vikki also came and it was just the 8 of us which was perfect. We presented Ronnie the skipper with the cake which he shared with us. It was a great day., calm and a lovely light and beautiful sky but very, very cold. I even put a hat on!

The outward journey was very uneventful aside from lots of gannets and there was no one on Soay to row out to meet us so the post got left in one of the little row boats. On the way back though, right at the end we spotted a pod of porpoises who were unusually friendly and curious and breached around the boat for ages. We also saw two minke whales who stayed with us for a long time – the sea was once again alive 🙂

We were out for a good 3/4 hour extra and it felt like a fitting end to what has been a phenomenal summer season of wildlife watching out on the sea each week. In our wildest dreams I don’t think we could have dared hope for this to be there for us week in week out with such amazing wildlife spotting experiences every time. The fact we also got to share it with family and friends on several occasions has made it extra special too. We’re looking forward to the next season of wildlife experiences starting with the red deer rut in the next weeks.

We dropped Ady off in the village as he was off helping Ian take some more stuff up Hebnet Hill as we’re now calling it here. We went home and the kids had a happy hour or so playing with Bonnie in the sunshine while I had a cup of tea and blogged. We then went down to the village via feeding the animals and persuaded Kate out for a beer while we waited for Ian and Ady to return. It ended up a nice evening down at the shop as Fliss came out too (Thursday night is veg order night) so we stayed for a couple of hours before coming home for pasta dinner.