We walk every day, sometimes twice a day, the walks varying between four and seven miles. Today we spent time meandering through the woodland around Dunrobin Castle where the first snowdrops are in flower.
After the slight but now noticeable lengthening of the day, this mass of flowers is the first real sign of the end of a winter which has, so far, been almost worryingly mild.
We keep discovering new things, this a monument to Harriet Sutherland, 1806 - 1868, who was a daughter of the 6th Earl of Carlisle and married the second Duke of Sutherland, her first cousin, by whom she had eleven children.
It's approached along an overgrown path and the area round the monument is unkempt. Various small bits have fallen off it, but a carving on one side of it tells us that the foundation stone was laid by Queen Victoria and another has a quote from one of Harriet's last addresses in which she said, "Neither failing sight nor altered health will make dear Dunrobin less vivid nor change the love I bear to Sutherland."
There are more buzzards in the skies above Suffolk than there are here. We've occasionally seen and heard them call but we disturbed a pair in the woodland today so I managed the first photograph of one since we arrived, pursued, as always, by a small bird.
Then, this afternoon in fading light, we strolled along Golspie's beach, and stopped on our way back to watch upward of a thousand geese pass over in skein after skein, probably heading for Loch Fleet for the night.
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