Ankles exposed

Today’s guest picture comes from my sister Susan who met this hirsute gardener doing a little watering  in Regent’s Park this morning.

We had a very untypical Sunday today with no church choir, no Sunday bike ride and no slow cooker.  In fact I only had time for a very brief look at the garden before we had to leave the town.

We are an equal opportunity bee employer.

Clematis and lily bring fresh life to the garden.

The reason for our early journey out of town was an assignation to meet with Matilda and her parents for lunch in North Berwick on the other side of the country.

The weather was benign and the 80 mile drive was largely traffic free and a real pleasure in itself.  After coffee and a teacake in a handy garden centre near North Berwick, we arrived at the station in good time to meet the midday train.

North Berwick station is literally the end of the line.

It has a well kept station sign on one side of the track and a large selection of black berries behind the platform.

Matilda’s train rolled down the hill into the station…

….bang on time and it wasn’t long before we were enjoying a good lunch with Matilda, Al and Clare in a cafe on North Berwick’s busy High Street.  While we were there, Mrs Tootlepedal bought a quite large mirror.

After lunch, we went down to the beach.  There was a lot of sand about and sadly some of it was obviously in the wrong place and needed to moved.

This was a big task but I managed to tempt Matilda down to the edge of the sea to do a little light paddling instead and I left the photography to the Carlyle Place Community Camera Co-operative (Al and Clare) while we had fun.

Picture courtesy of the Clare section of the CPCCC

I think that this is a quintessential portrait of the British having fun at the seaside.

There was a bit of splashing involved but that didn’t discourage Mrs Tootlepedal who came to join us.  Though you can’t see it in the pictures, which give an impression of an idyllically calm day,  the waves were very big to a small person and needed a lot of leaping over when they came in.

Picture courtesy of the Al section of the CPCCC

While we were paddling, Al allowed his attention to stray out to sea where a Border Force vessel was cruising up and down.

Quite what it was doing was a mystery.

I saw other vessels during our stay on the sand.

Some big….

…and some small…

….and usually with some of North Berwick’s little islands as a backdrop.

That is the island where we saw puffins when we visited North Berwick earlier this year

When we had had enough fun on the beach, we went off to taste some of North Berwick’s celebrated ice creams and found a bench in a little public garden to sit on while we enjoyed them.

Picture courtesy of the Clare section of the CPCCC

There were some beautiful dahlias in the garden.

It had clouded over by this time so instead of going back to the beach, we walked along to the harbour and took the path along the rocks…

…from where we could see the Bass Rock….

…home of the gannets.

We had all taken the boat trip round the Bass Rock in May and Matilda and Clare and sailed round it more recently but today we didn’t have time so we watched the boat speeding back from the rock…

…and inching carefully through the narrow harbour entrance.

There was just time for Matilda to have a ride on a roundabout….

….acknowledging the waves from her family as she passed us by by ringing a bell….

Picture courtesy of the Clare section of the CPCCC

…before it was time for Matilda, Al and Clare to catch the train back to Edinburgh.  What with paddling, looking at boats, ice cream and a go on a roundabout, it had been a perfect seaside outing.

Our drive back went very smoothly and was enhanced by a visit to the chip shop in Hawick for some sustenance to help us get home at the end of a long but very worthwhile day.

I did some see some hips on our walk down to the town from the station but the wind was blowing quite a bit so the flying bird of the day today is an example of the hippy hippy shake caught in action.