Not a Cheap Date
⬅ previous ⬆intro next ➡Day 7 ~ Sunday 8 September ~ Tresco
Aha! Amanda has spotted another cat.
Something we had never realised until we got Oberon and Titania from the RSPCA and started following them on Facebook (because Facebook didn't exist when we got Theo and Poly) is that black cats are the hardest to home. It had literally never occurred to us that the traditional superstitions actually affected anyone's real-life choices. I had two (mostly) black cats when Amanda and I first got together; Amanda herself had grown up with black cats; Theo was black... and although we've had other coloured cats both separately and jointly, our choices have never for a moment been any kind of preconceived "we want an XXX cat". A friend-of-a-friend once said to me, "What sort of cats do you have?", to which my reply was, "They're not 'what sort of cat?' cats".
Now don't get me wrong: Albert the Tonkinese who lived down the road until the family moved a couple of years ago, was a very pretty cat and had a personality that elevated mere chutzpah to a near-transcendental level; we don't have anything against pedigree cats in principle. But good old moggies tend to be healthier and live longer and that counts for a lot with us.
And we gather that while the Instagram generation may be less superstitious, they're generally crap photographers and don't know how to take pictures of black cats, so mark them down for social-media-unfriendliness.
Well that's nonsense: to prove it, this picture of Theo with a toy reindeer for Christmas 2013 won a prize at our local vets!
Oberon and Titania would agree.
But I fear I'm digressing again.
Amanda continues her morning run, with some rather more morninglike pictures.
Here's Firethorn again, we have some more island-hopping to do. St Agnes today, southernmost of the main islands.
St Agnes ahead.
A short walk up from the shore, the Turks Head pub.
There is a personal significance to this pub that is not immediately obvious:.The Turks Head pub in Twickenham gives its name to a 10k run that Amanda has done several times, and you can read about one of the recent events here.
It is also the only pub on the island, which gives it personal significance to everyone.
The post office window display.
This 17th-century lighthouse has not been operational since 1911 and has been converted to residential use according to online sources.
An unassuming little stone building. But what's that sign in the window?
Goodness!
Fortunately, we didn't see anything.
We walk along a rather rockier beach than we had at Tresco.
We like the brightly coloured seaweed.
And pretty coloured stones.
This is interesting:
Climate Adaptation Scilly
The Climate Adaptation Scilly project aims to help our islands adapt to the impact of climate change - protecting our homes, wildlife, economy and scarce water supply.
What's the problem?
Porth Coose suffered severe overtopping during the 2013-14 winter storms, weakening the protection provided by the sea defences heré. The crest and rear side were breached, and this has lowered the height of the sea defences, effectively exposing Big Pool to seawater inundation.
What's the suggested solution?
The height of the crest will be raised using rock bags. These are large mesh bags filled with smaller rocks. This will raise the crest height by approximately 1.2 m, and widen it by 2.4 m. There is an existing concrete mattress on the seaward side which will be left in place. The landward side of the mesh bags will be covered with site won material including sand and cobbles, to slope down from the crest to the existing ground. This will be reseeded to help re-establish the habitat and to fix the topsoil to protect the rear of the crest from any erosion.
Seems to be quite a major program: Climate Adaptation Scilly.
We have a packed lunch sitting outside the community hall, but up in the porch roof there's a nest full of baby birds. The mother returns to feed them, but the corner is too dark to get an unblurred picture. That's the price you pay for the small size and weight of the 600mm f/11 lens.
But hum... Compare this following alternative taken with my 24-105mm f/4 and digitally zoomed to match the size.
Definitely cleaner because I've needed much less noise reduction and at blog resolution the theoretical inferiority of digital scaling is irrelevant.
Well I thought that was interesting anyway.
"DO NOT TAKE ANY ITEM FROM THIS AREA - IT ALL HAS A USE"
I can relate to that; I suspect Amanda may have been thinking of me when she took this picture.
Google Lens tells me that these are Bar-Tailed Godwits and then Wikipedia tells me an interesting fact about them (though not these particular birds). The migration of the subspecies Limosa lapponica baueri across the Pacific Ocean from Alaska to New Zealand is the longest known non-stop flight of any bird, and also the longest journey without pausing to feed by any animal. The round trip is over 29,000 km!
See Wikipedia for more.
Somebody has been creative with rocks!
They are near the ex-lighthouse but it's not clear if they are related.
We're now on Gugh, a small uninhabited island linked to St Agnes by a sand bar. We've been told that the tide won't cover it before our return boat, so we have time to explore it a bit.
A rather furry rock. The Scillies do seem to grow veritable forests of lichen on just about any available surface.
Not so close to the seals as yesterday.
Multicolour furry rocks.
We are somewhat surprised to find that the blackberries are still barely ripe. We can find a tasty one here and there, but not enough to be worth collecting.
The top of the central hill. The track up is a lot more visible on my GPS unit than on the ground.
In the background you can see the causeway between the islands.
Back to the Turks Head, where it would be churlish in the extreme not to make a small contribution to the island economy.
In front of the pub, the ground slopes pretty sharply, so they've had to be quite creative with the seating.
And now the boat back to Tresco.
We return via Bryher, but because of the tides, we come in at a different jetty to normal. There's a story about this: those of a certain age will doubtless remember "Challenge Anneka", and the building of this quay in 1990 was one of her challenges! It was rebuilt in 2008, and Anneka came to officially re-open it.
You can watch the original TV program on YouTube. Series 2, Episode 4, so pretty early on.
After this, it's back across to Tresco and our cottage for the night.
But...
"Houston, we have a problem."
Recall that when looking for accommodation on our way back, Amanda had found that the YHA had recently (2022) opened a glamping site at the Eden Project, and among the offerings were some Airstream caravans. And that if you do Eden parkrun, you get free admission to the site! Wow, we thought, how wonderful!
But what we had in mind was what we did in Bolivia. It turns out that the YHA version is a bit more basic, with the Airstreams just for sleeping in; washing and cooking facilities are in a separate block. We only realise this now, when working out logistics.
This does not go go down well with Madam, and I can't say I'm that wild either. It turns out we can cancel for free, but in all honesty we'd've written it off if we had to. We are now frantically looking online for something we can book at short notice that fits the bill a bit better.
The best we can find is a bit of an unknown quantity, but it's an en-suite room in a shared house, sort of Airbnb-but-not-Airbnb. It's got decent reviews on TripAdvisor/Booking.com, so here's hoping.
[Future fact: the YHA site appears to be permanently closed now, only a few months later. It's not clear why.]
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