Sunday at the seaside
Aug. 10th, 2023 06:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustOn Saturday we had travelled to the extreme edge of the country: so on Sunday we stayed close to (our temporary) home. First we visited Monreith, driving down through the golf course, to where a bath leads the short distance to the beach:
It wasn't the most spectacular beach I've ever met: our local beaches are larger, and their sands are more golden. There was also a ripe rotten seaweed smell I could have done without. But a walk on the beach when the sun shines can't be bad, and approaching those cliffs gave us a mesmerising view of twisted and twined strata...
Not far away, overlooking the beach, is a memorial to Gavin Maxwell:
The Maxwells are the local gentry, and Gavin grew up locally. He didn't live here as an adult, didn't write A Ring of Bright Water here, but there's an evident desire to make much of the connection (it is claimed - I don't know on what evidence - that he would exercise his otter on the beach here when visiting his childhood home). I haven't read A Ring of Bright Water, and was surprised to learn from Wikipedia that Maxwell's otter was Iraqi in origin, obtained for him by Wilfred Thesiger, and turned out to be of a previously known species, which was given the name, yes, Maxqwell's otter.
From here we went a short distance along the coast to Port William: which keeps snagging at my mind, but it is indeed Port William not Fort William, a planned village, founded in 1770 by, and named for, Sir William Maxwell of Monreith. There's a sculpture overlooking the sea here, too:
He's life size, and initially, leaning next to him on his rail and politely not really looking at him, I didn't realise that he was made of bronze. Port William has an independent lifeboat, part of whose fundraising appears to consist in running the café above the harbour, so we lunched there, and watched the lifeboat practicing its thing (crew rehearsals? trips for tourists? who knows) below us.
Then we went back to the Old Place, and ate dinner prepared for us by vegans (vegan tiramisu works surprisingly well) and did the crossword.
It wasn't the most spectacular beach I've ever met: our local beaches are larger, and their sands are more golden. There was also a ripe rotten seaweed smell I could have done without. But a walk on the beach when the sun shines can't be bad, and approaching those cliffs gave us a mesmerising view of twisted and twined strata...
Not far away, overlooking the beach, is a memorial to Gavin Maxwell:
The Maxwells are the local gentry, and Gavin grew up locally. He didn't live here as an adult, didn't write A Ring of Bright Water here, but there's an evident desire to make much of the connection (it is claimed - I don't know on what evidence - that he would exercise his otter on the beach here when visiting his childhood home). I haven't read A Ring of Bright Water, and was surprised to learn from Wikipedia that Maxwell's otter was Iraqi in origin, obtained for him by Wilfred Thesiger, and turned out to be of a previously known species, which was given the name, yes, Maxqwell's otter.
From here we went a short distance along the coast to Port William: which keeps snagging at my mind, but it is indeed Port William not Fort William, a planned village, founded in 1770 by, and named for, Sir William Maxwell of Monreith. There's a sculpture overlooking the sea here, too:
He's life size, and initially, leaning next to him on his rail and politely not really looking at him, I didn't realise that he was made of bronze. Port William has an independent lifeboat, part of whose fundraising appears to consist in running the café above the harbour, so we lunched there, and watched the lifeboat practicing its thing (crew rehearsals? trips for tourists? who knows) below us.
Then we went back to the Old Place, and ate dinner prepared for us by vegans (vegan tiramisu works surprisingly well) and did the crossword.
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Date: 2023-08-10 07:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-08-11 04:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-08-10 08:50 pm (UTC)That's great.
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Date: 2023-08-11 04:46 pm (UTC)