Unexpected

This was Sunday evening (as I write this on Monday), after a relentlessly grey day. There was an ever so brief showing of the sun just before it set, hardly time to rescue the camera from my bag. I thought that was going to be it.

As we came back past the Coastguard Station, Gus asked, as he does every time, if we could do the Ashmeadow extension. It doesn't matter how far we've walked, he always wants to trot up the steps to the vantage point over Ashmeadow House and then down to the prom again. If I'm not feeling too drained, I agree; and it's a sign of my recovering energy that this last couple of weeks we have been doing it most evenings.

I thanked him for his insistence as in the extra few minutes it took to do the additional ascent and distance, this sunset sky appeared unexpectedly, reflected in the saturated mud of the foreshore and in the wind-choppy water of the estuary. If we hadn't done the extension, we would have got in the car and gone home oblivious.