A wartime adventure

A deceptive title - but I had such fun this afternoon, a crazy, muddy scramble to mark the last day of being the age I am now before I become too old tomorrow for such behaviour ...

All the time I've lived in Dunoon I've known there was a WW2 battery on the hills above Toward. I've even made a short expedition to see if we could spot how to reach them, but although it was a good 20+ years ago I was with sensible people and we turned back. Today I was with my crazy pal and the notion took us to explore - and we found them! By the time we'd negotiated the track, churned to mud by tractors and animals, we were spattered as if we'd been in combat ourselves - but we had a great view, a real sense of the past, and the satisfaction of a goal achieved.

Only thing was, we felt emboldened not to return by the path we'd taken. And so it was that we climbed a fence from a muddy field into a less muddy wood, skirted two gorges leading temptingly towards the shore, rejected a low bit of fence that would have taken us back to the farm track, and clambered precariously downhill till we reached the boundary of the seaside fields, mercifully occupied only by incurious sheep. A last balancing act along a mossy fallen branch,  a ploughter through some questionable mud and a jaggy final fence had us on the shore road, slightly dishevelled and exceeding pleased with ourselves.

We came back along the beach, to avoid the let-down of an ordinary road. My extra photo is of the waves, which seemed wonderfully blue after the green and brown of the farmland. We just missed the rain that by now was pursuing us up the river, and as we drove back to Dunoon the lightning flashed in welcome.