The Urge

I can't escape the need to write. It's an urge, almost an agony, one which Coleridge well described in his tale of the ancient mariner. For me, it is made worse by carrying a camera when I go for a walk, by the taking of pictures which I feel I need to share. So, forgive me, the Memory Wanderer lives on as we start a new life in this small town in Sutherland, an hour's drive to the north of Inverness.

We arrived in Golspie on Thursday and have gone through more than our fair share of the problems common when one moves into what was someone else's slightly neglected house, exacerbated by our being in a strange town with almost no contacts to help. We'll overcome them but, perversely, they have made our return to the empty spaces of Scotland even more joyous. So we're walking every day, along the beach, up into the woodland behind the town, in the knowledge that there are endless opportunities ahead of us to roam freely across this beautiful, wild land.

This afternoon, in the sort of gusty grey weather that seems normal here at this time of year, we walked south along Golspie beach, enjoying watching the bird life and....

....coming across strange tracks across the sand. These are very like turtle tracks but we don't think they visit this part of the world, let alone in this weather, so conclude that these mark the passage of a seal which was on the beach at high tide and then made its way back to the sea.