The Bridge Over the Atlantic

A mixture of sunshine and showers today - just the usual! We drove down to the Isle of Seil this morning partly to take my prize plant of Pamianthe peruviana to a friend with a large conservatory - she has agreed to keep it on permanent loan as I don't have space for it - and partly to nick a few bits of slate from the beach to edge my mini-pond. 

For those who don't know the area, this part of the coast, known as the Slate Islands, has beaches almost entirely covered with slate debris, left over from the slate quarrying trade. I don't think you're really supposed to take it, but every garden in the area has slate somewhere and houses and walls are built of it. As it happens, our friends had been doing a bit of excavating to build a room on the back of their house so I collected the pieces I needed from their own spoil heap!

Clachan Bridge, designed by John Stevenson of Oban and built in 1792-3, is a very well-known local sight, jokingly referred to as The Bridge Over the Atlantic as it crosses Seil Sound, which  is connected to the Atlantic at both ends and separates the island from the mainland. It has a rather high span, 39ft from the bed of the channel, to enable fishing boats to travel beneath it.