The Seafront

This is the seafront at Golspie on a sunny almost-midwinter's morning, with Silver Rock rising behind it. The A9 trunk road, Main Street, runs fifty yards back from and parallel to the front, with the town strung along its length. Our little cottage is just on the other side of the A9 so, if the traffic allows, it's a two minute walk from our front door to the beach. It's not quite as good as living actually on the beach but I'm not complaining because....

....it's almost everything a beach should be, with some mostly plastic-free flotsam just above the high-tide line, a narrow storm beach of cobbles and then a wide sand beach exposed as the tide falls.

The sand is clean and firm underfoot and has a character of its own. These pustules seemed to have formed as the first waves of a rising tide lapped gently across it: when trodden upon, they burst. I have never seen anything like them and can't imagine how they form.

However, what I like most about the beach is the variety of birds which inhabit it. These are redshanks, but we've also seen oystercatchers, ringed plovers, curlews, grey herons, a couple of diver species, various ducks, several species of gull, jackdaws and rooks and, amongst the flotsam, pipits. Most of them are remarkably tolerant of humans though they do draw the line at the dog-walkers.

So it's a good beach to spend time on, and certainly a beach which I want to get to know intimately.