On the beach

We reasoned that if Everyone was watching the football yesterday afternoon, we could go out without worrying about crowds of people having the same idea, and since neither of us thrives in this heat, we should look for cooler weather on the coast. As far as it went this logic was impeccable: if we had been paying more attention to the football, we might not have pushed our luck by going to Sunderland, but we got away with it. The pubs may have been packed, but there were only a scattering of families on the beach.

The Harbour View carpark at Roker had been yarnbombed, with crochet jellyfish on top of the bollards: durham_rambler thinks this anticipates the arrival of the Tall Ships. I liked this little constellation of items:

We walked out along the pier to the lighthouse, and watched the anglers catching fish - including some which I thought looked like mackerel (and apparently this is quite possible).

At last we were ready to venture onto the beach, rolling up our trouser legs and picking our way barefoot over the pebbles down to the wet sand. I felt refreshed as soon as the cool clear water washed over my feet:

The other end of the beach was sandier, and we strolled back along the promenade. Time for an ice cream! It was durham_rambler's suggestion, and I was going to resist, but they had such amazing flavours:

Two scoops each: I had black treacle ice cream (as good as it sounds) and Sicilian lemon sorbet; durham_rambler had salted chocolate ice cream and raspberry and sorrel sorbet (he let me taste the sorbet, which tasted of raspberries).

Hashtag of the day, spotted on a banner across the Wearmouth bridge congratulating the University's graduating students: #hawaythegrads!