A mellow yellow bank holiday

It rained overnight and this morning when I woke up it looked like it was going to be a wet day. However after breakfast it seemed clear, so we set off for a walk over Barrow Common up the hill behind the house. By the time we got there it was very warm and the jackets had to come off. The common was full of colourful gorse bushes and we also saw a few muntjac.

After the walk we had coffees at home, and then drove to a nearby rapeseed filed as I wanted to get some more photos. It is so smelly and it does affect my hay fever so I did not linger for long. We went on to see the ruins of Creake Abbey, and then went to The Victoria at Holkham for lunch, It was a very good lunch in a beautiful dining room. 

It was so sunny all day, which was quite unexpected. I wanted to photograph the high tide at the coal barn at Thornham, when the water surround the building completely. We got there in time for the high tide at 4.30pm but I did not realise that last time I saw it when this occurred, it was a spring high tide which only occurs twice a year. The next one is in September so I have made a note in my diary to go see the building in water then. Instead I photographed some of the boat in the creek - see extra.

I received an email from the chairman of my camera club to say that I have won the season's print competition (for my advanced class) for having the highest score for the year - I was very pleased to hear that as I had not worked that out. I will get a trophy at the awards ceremony on the night of the opening of our exhibition. 

Tommy wrote another exam today (no bank holiday at university). It is so tough to do well in his course - as an engineer, he does very well in his projects and was therefore hoping that his projects would help lift his overall degree grade, but the university has a rule that your degree is awarded on the lower grade of projects or exams. At Cambridge University they also do not award a first class degree to all those who get over 70% (or whatever that rate is), they only award first class degrees to a certain small percentage of the entire faculty cohort, so some people who do achieve that percentage will not get a first class degree unless they are in the top 5% of the year group (whatever those percentages are, that information is not disclosed)