We had a good view of the moon reflecting over the sea the other night, with clear skies and a calm sea. The small light on the left is from a fishing trawler. The lights on the right are from the village of Whithorn across the bay.
Here’s the view across the bay on Tuesday morning. Not really enough wind for sailing but very pleasant weather for enjoying the scenery.
Wednesday update: We had visits from more sailing boats yesterday. Here are a couple of them sailing back out of the bay on Wednesday morning.
Two years ago, on our wedding anniversary, the roof blew off our hotel in Dumfries. This year we had the Irish Sea trying to re-model our garden. The combination of a high tide, low pressure weather system and strong winds from the south-west raised the sea level about a metre higher than usual. At their highest the waves were breaking over into our lower section of garden. The steps that we had previously installed down to the beach were undermined and floated away up the bay. The bigger waves also caused some damage to our dry stone wall that separates the garden from the beach. Here’s the sea at high tide.
The water in the bay came up higher than we have ever seen it before and flooded over into the lower part of the field.
Here’s the scene when the tide had retreated. The beach has been scoured away up to our wall and there’s a lot of plastic that has been washed up or unearthed from the previous beach area. Most of our wall is still intact though but we will probably add some extra strengthening and protection when we get it repaired. The waves also brought in plenty of new driftwood and a bright blue fish box which I’m sure we can use in some future garden projects.
This is the view from the new high tide mark down in the field below the cottage. Lots of new driftwood (and plastic debris) to collect.
Kirkcudbright also had some flooding problems although it was restricted to the immediate vicinity of the harbour. The ships in the harbour are floating quite a bit higher than usual. There’s a video of scenes from the flooding on the Kirkcudbright Facebook page.
Christmas morning was fine and clear so we had a walk along to coast to Carrick. Here we are on Barlocco Beach with Ardwall Island in the background.
Gabrielle built a stone version of a Christmas tree.
Here’s one of the stone pillars at Knockbrex Harbour with Knockbrex House in the background.
The view from Knockbrex Hill over Ardwall and Barlocco Islands was quite atmospheric.
Modern cameras are wonderful things and can now automatically stitch together a number of photographs to make a panorama shot right in the camera. Here are a few recent examples. The rainbow picture was taken by Billy on his Samsung phone camera while we were out working on the greenhouse.
Here’s another one from Billy’s Samsung – an extremely wide view of Dead Man’s Bay and Cauldforth Bay, just round the corner from Kirkandrews
This one is from an Olympus point-and-shoot camera and shows the view across Wigtown Bay from the Isle of Man on the left to the Whithorn peninsula on the right.
We had an unexpected visitor to Kirkandrews Bay last weekend. A black swan, normally a resident of Australia, was paddling around the bay. It probably escaped from a local wildfowl collection or came over from Glenkiln near Dumfries where there are known to be a small group of black swans.
Last weekend we explored a bit more of the local coastline and took a look at the section from Ross Bay up towards Kirkcudbright. We parked at Balmangan farm where there is a camp site and a network of walking trails. We followed one of the trails round the edge of Ross Bay then found a stile over a wall leading down to a small beach. From this point we worked our way northwards along the rocky shore line between the high and low tide marks.
The rocks along the coast are very steeply bedded and at right angles to the shore line so progress along the coast entails a lot of scrambling over the rocky ridges.
At one point we had to climb a small gully to get past one of the ridges. The rocks were nice and dry and offered plenty of hand and foot holds just where we needed them.
A little further up the coast we came across an old shipwreck. The ship was probably wrecked on Frenchman’s Rock, an outcrop in the middle of Kirkcudbright bay, then washed ashore here.
The next headland was a pinnacle of rock dropping into the sea. Some interesting scrambling moves were required to get across the front of the pinnacle but the rock provided some very good hand and foot holds just where they were needed.
The descent down the far side of the pinnacle was also assisted by some nicely placed flakes of rock.
By this time, the tide was rising quite quickly so we took the next available opportunity to head up into Senwick woods and get onto the footpath that tracks along the top of the cliffs, leading eventually to Mill Hall and Nun Mill Bay.
On the return journey we stayed on the footpath and had a look at the remains of Senwick church and graveyard which is now being absorbed back into the woodlands.
We had another visit from Hilary and Jonathan in July, right in the middle of the spell of hot, dry weather. Here are Gabrielle and Jonathan inspecting the contents of one of the rock pools at Kirkandrews Bay.
The sea was a bit frisky outside Kirkandrews Bay but we managed to get out in the kayaks for a trip round the headland to Rumblekirn.
Here are Gabrielle and Hilary paddling back into the bay.
John & Jonathan demonstrating synchronised paddling on the way out past Meggerland Point.
We’ve had some spring tides this week, giving us some very high and very low tide levels. Some local ferry services to be re-scheduled because the boats could not get to the slipways.
Around Craig Cottage we have seen some new sections of coast exposed.
Here’s Gabrielle on an evening stroll down in the low tide zone checking out some ripples in the sand. We walked round into Castle Haven Bay where the boat moorings were high and dry.
This almost looks like a tropical beach scene – until you notice the snow patches still lingering on the hillside on the left!
I suppose we’ve had fairly typical January weather with a good mix of sunshine, rain and wind. There’s been very little snow down to sea level but we have had some fairly strong winds blowing in off the Irish Sea. Our latest find of fish boxes down on the beach included specimens from Holland and Brittany. Every evening brings a different vista across Wigtown Bay. Here is the view a few days ago as the sun struggled through between multiple cloud layers.
Last weekend we had high tide in the late afternoon along with some calm weather so we launched the kayaks for a paddle round Barlocco Island. It was flat calm in Kirkandrews Bay but we did find a few waves and a bit of swell as we rounded the west side of Barlocco. We saw an otter just behind where Gabrielle is paddling then a few minutes later a huge seal surfaced between our kayaks. I was facing the other way so I didn’t see it but Gabrielle assures me that it was a large specimen. We’ll have to make a return visit with the camera at the ready.
Saturday and Sunday were the clearest days we’ve had since we moved into Craig Cottage. We could see the Isle of Man clearly for the whole weekend. This is the Isle of Man off in the distance behind a collection of pointy rocks just up the coast from Kirkandrews.
By the time we returned to base, the sun was well on the way to setting and we enjoyed the best sunset of the year so far:
