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Oh what a grey day!

I do love colour and that does include grey!  It varies hugely.  There are blue greys, yellow greys and so on.  Today has been a totally grey day, starting with the collared dove which featured in an earlier post.

This morning we visited The Walled Garden at Archerfield, just outside Gullane.  It's a new venture with a restaurant, bar, shop etc and everyone is talking about it in these parts, so we thought we would go and sound it out.  Archerfield is a huge private estate with a grand house sitting in the middle of it.  There is a golf course, spa and a hugely expensive housing estate which is called 'The Village'.  We drove round it and frankly the planners should be ashamed of themselves, allowing such a development.  It is totally devoid of any architectural merit at all and Mr Gaucho ex-RIBA thought I was inflicting some sort of punishment on him by driving that way!  When architects are crying out for work and would particularly welcome the opportunity to design a private home, it is heartbreaking to see so many missed opportunities. 

Anyway, moving on and not wanting to upset anyone further, we visited the walled garden which must have been magnificent in its heyday.  It's huge and completely bare at the moment, but work has begun.
It has beautiful, predominantly grey, walls.  I think I will leave it a good while before going back and hopefully by then the whole project within the walled garden will be rather more clothed and softened with planting.  It's all very new at the moment, just a few weeks old. and feels a bit bare and raw. 
By lunchtime it had stopped raining so I took the dogs to the beach.  It was all very grey there too. The sky had some interesting clouds, looking very much like the ripples of sand on the beach.
It is not clear to see but the faint little blob in the distance of the photograph below is the Bass Rock.  If you were watching Springwatch on BBC1 last night you will have seen it at close hand, along with the wonderful gannets which live on the rock and dive into the sea in such spectacular fashion to catch their fish.  It would be worth watching the episode on iPlayer if you missed the programme. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b021496k/Springwatch_2013_Episode_2/
Belhaven Beach, near Dunbar, has a surf school and today there was a party of hardy schoolchildren having a surfing lesson.  The grey sea didn't look the least bit inviting to me but I suppose if you are young and the only other option is sitting behind a desk, the choice is easy to make!
They seemed to be enjoying catching the running waves!
This is my favourite grey of the day, and I love its relationship with the grey green grasses at the edge of the dunes.
Here endeth my third post of the day.  Now I must go and do something useful about the house!


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