Searching for Excitement

We drove out to Littleferry today for a walk through the forestry on the eastern shores of Loch Fleet on one of those days when I yearned for some sort of excitement, perhaps seeing wildlife which was new or different, or spotting a rare fungus or.... stumbling across something unusual.  This was not to be, the most notable sighting being....

....an elongated bump in the ground running for a good thirty metres across the sandy forest floor which we decided was a mole moving house.

We did have one flash of hope when we came across this, one of many areas where the mossy soil had been turned over. Could it be wild boar? Could it be, for those of you who remember them, one of Hughie's pigs, escaped again? Or a foraging badger or two?

With light winds and moments of bright sunshine it was a pleasant walk, much of it along the shore of Loch Fleet looking out to where....

....a large colony of seals, over thirty visible, makes its home in the loch where they spend much of their day....

....loafing around on one of the sandbanks which were just being exposed by the falling tide.

At least some of the walk was new, and it was warm enough for us to spend time sitting on this bench looking out at the view - and reminding ourselves that we should not be complaining, for we are extraordinarily lucky to have walks such as this one close at hand, and to be able to do it meeting only one other walker in a two-hour wander.