A couple of walks

I took the dogs for a walk on Belhaven beach yesterday afternoon.  The tide was out, lovely waves as always, and a huge expanse of sand for the girls to run and run and run.  The Labrador lass was in and out of the water as usual.  She is so excited to be on the beach that she just doesn't know what to do with herself, running here, there and everywhere.  It's lovely to see.  Tilly enjoys herself too, bustling from one pile of seaweed to another, taking a generous nibble from each.  

We came back along the saltmarsh which runs behind the beach.  The dogs put up quite a variety of birds, including one of my favourites, the curlew.  They are big birds with their lovely curving beaks.  These flew off, but not too far away and then treated me to their wild, remote whinnowing call.  

It's a simple landscape.  Undemanding, beautiful, full of subtle colour and a perfect place to go and breathe in deeply.

This morning Tilly and I took the opportunity to walk around the stubble field at the end of the drive, before the plough finished turning over the soil.  The tractor has spent the last two days in the field, preparing it for the next year's crop.  There was just a little bit left to complete today and we walked on the remains of this summer's cornfield and now it is all gone.  The soil is a deep cocoa colour and in the furrows there were some other lovely colours.

By fiddling around with iPhoto I can pull some really rich and beautiful red and ochre colours out of the earth.  They look a bit like an abstract painting.

Two good walks.