If you go down to the woods - and beyond

If you go down through the woody bit to the end of the garden past the canoe

and down along the jetty (a slip way that has well and truly slipped!) you come on to the beach. At low tide it is a vast area, hap hazard, slippery, squelchy, with the constant drip drip dripping of water. Almost sinister. But as your eyes adjust to what appears at first, to be a dark grey green mass of boulders and rock pools you notice an array of colours and textures that are quite beautiful. On Monday afternoon when the tide was at its lowest we needed to measure the distance from the bottom of the garden to the waters edge to show how far the waste water pipe needs to extend out into the loch. A distance of around 24 meters. There is a difference in water height of 5 meters. That is a big tide!

This huge buttress of rock juts out from the bottom of the garden almost foreboding

but on closer inspection it reveals the most vivid colours almost like a painting on its rough and jagged surfaces

This could be from a film set for the Lord of the Rings. A jumbled mass of sea weed dark crevices and fallen trees, with the ever present dripping water. The trees are tangled and distorted into weird reptile and monster shapes. I'm looking for bleached and twisted drift wood.

It seems every available rock surface has an occupant. Limpets

and mussels (I think) all jostling for the best position on the beach

Even the mussels hanging on tightly to the rocks have smaller creatures hanging on equally tightly to their clamped shut shells!There isn't an available free space to be found. Just a tumbled chaotic mass of sea life, shells and sea weed. Little wriggly creatures make patterns in what there is of the sandy gravelly beach

The grey green of this sea weed would be a perfect colour for the kitchen units!

Sea weed like spinach glistening wet in the sun light

A tiny perfect shell no bigger than my finger nail.
Our little family of builders returned last night. I feel I should give them time to settle in before I rush along to record their progress! They probably want to organise themselves, do their hair, make a few signs, have a cup of tea and five packets of biscuits first!