Life in general

So, what's been going on it the last couple of weeks? The car has been recovered from over the cliff which is great. Sadly recovering it resulted in more damage than when it was pushed over, but hopefully the scars in the grassland will heal when the growing season starts again in the spring. All in all, a lot of effort was put into the job, with one member of the recovery team (Alan) toiling up and down the cliff track (some 300 foot climb) on several occasions carrying bags full of debris and the battery to make sure that the foreshore was left as clean as it could be. And it was all done very swiftly before the car got swept into the sea.

And all this happened just after the repair to the lighthouse road had been completed with the erection of a new fence (picture right). As you can imagine, I wasn't very keen on the recovery vehicles going up the lighthouse road as I didn't want a repeat performance of the oil tanker, but conditions were just too rough to get the wreckage out by sea so there was no other option. Anyway, the road looks very smart now, and we will be keeping the 2m axel width restriction on the road from now on to be safe.

Wildlife wise. There are plenty of migrants moving around with skeins of geese passing daily. We have had a few waxwing (picture left) sightings too, and a flock of 9 whooper swans flying about. So always worth taking the bins with you. And that's what I'm going to do now - get out there and see what's about!

Oh - and top tip for the day. If you have a padlock that will just not shift however much you persuade and squirt it with WD40 - heat it up, it works a treat (thanks to my brother in law for that little gem)!