Really summer - tick!

I've said for years that summer doesn't really happen unless I get in a swim at my favourite beach along Argyll's Hidden Coast at Ostel Bay. It's an hour's drive for us, followed by the best part of a mile on foot over the machair, so we don't go lightly or on less than perfect days. Today, however, was that elusive creature the Perfect Day ...

We spent the morning organising some of our disrupted lives. I hung out another washing; Himself rang the people at Imagine, who arranged our cruise. We had coffee outside. And then I could bear it no longer that we didn't have any fresh fruit or veg in the house and went, against every instinct, shopping in Morrison's. This confirmed me in my preference for the 8.30am shop ...

In the afternoon, however, we abandoned it all again and set off in the car for the very tip of the peninsula. We left it more or less in a ditch, along with the other parked cars beside the beach path, and set off through the late afternoon sunlight, happily greeting the family groups with hot children and restive dogs - happy in the knowledge that every group was one less filling up the beach. By the time we arrived there were only a few clumps of people and one distant dog, and we were able to sit near the marram grass on our own. And I had another swim. I had to go out towards Arran quite a long way (that's the darker shadow of Arran in the background of the larger picture in the collage.) The wee blob in the sea is me swimming back in to shore - the sea less shockingly cold than yesterday.  The other beach photo was taken shortly before we left and the top right is of the nature reserve lochan, mysterious and green and surrounded by trees and reeds - we pass it on our way to the sea. We walked back up the track through the muddy machair, the bracken turning brown around us and the berries on a nearby rowan gleaming like jewels. 

I promised some nice human moments in the horrid travel saga, and tonight I want to give a shout-out to the BA trouble shooter in Baggage Reclaim in Terminal 5 at Heathrow. Looking harassed, presumably because a bagless man had been shouting at him, he asked if I was in the queue and could he help. In the end he printed out the ticket receipts for our flight back to Glasgow because although I'd been told we had a flight I had no proof of it - everything was happening on the phone. He kept telling me "Remember - I'm not doing this" - I have a feeling he'd been promoted from issuing tickets some time ago now, and he sent us off to our hotel with tangible proof that we had places on a plane. He was kind and made me feel better - by that time Himself was well past doing anything. In the hell of Baggage Reclaim, he was a star. 

Tomorrow we should have one more day of sun; I hope to make the most of it.