Beach action - Inganess, Orkney

Time for our lunchtime walk in Orkney, this time we're off to Inganess beach beside the airport in Kirkwall, Orkney. The airport is there in the far distance, 15 or so flights away from the island every day to the mainland - we're hardly isolated here!

I love this beach because its also near to work like scapa beach is, but its also got the added bonus of a sunken ship in the middle of the bay - although in our family this isn't the 'sunken ship beach' we give that title to another beach, with, um sunken ships on it down a Barrier 4...........too confusing, I'll just get on with my walk!

 There we go lovely sunken ship in the middle of the bay, Juniata. No idea of the story I just like rusty things.......

 Its gorgeous - got a bit carried away trying to be a bit 'artistic' - I think I'll stick with my day job of gardening don't you? Now I've made it almost slide out the photo!

 I also like this beach as its a nice contrast of pebbles and gorgeous white sand................and of couse the peedie pup. Almost t-shirt weather, but the wind was cold. We tend to go from winter to summer with a blink of spring.

 Got a bit carried away with these photos too - I do like stones.

 Attempting to be artistic..........again, won't give up my day job.

 I've as many stones at home as I've pockets to put them in, I love the shapes of them all. Can look at them for hours.......

But, Peedie gets bored, so off we go in search of an adventure on the beach.............

 Off we go, first off we look for other folk, not alot of them about but we did see one.......and there is a nice house in the distance.

 Then we found a crab - which of course peedie tried to eat - bad idea - full of sand. He's called Peedie the Cairn and he's disgusting!

 Then we met an oyster catcher.........very pretty.

 More artistic photos of sand..........

 Then we happenned across a lovely little pied wag-tail, I'm not great at taking photos of birds but I do try. Again I won't leave my day job!

More rusty boats again! I told you I love it.

 And now for your close up!

And to prove it was windy - a self portrait of a windy sea monster!

 Unfortunately for you lot, even at the beach, I can find a bit of botanical action - and here we go - in the burn Caltha palustris (Marsh marigold, King cup, or any of the other 50 common names you might know it by...!). Latin is useful for so many reasons, mainly to know 'what' someone is talking about when they tell you about a flower! You can tell we had that drummed into us can't you?

I love anything in the buttercup family 'Ranunculaceae' is latin for a group of plants living where frogs abound' - i.e. they don't mind it a bit wet! what a lovely way of describing this group of plants - which has everything from Clematis to Monkshood and Anemones to Nigella. All very pretty. There is no escape, I'm sorry even the children run away when I run over and say look its a.............

Anyway, we had a nice walk - and the flowers at the end of it were a bonus!  I hope you enjoyed it too, we're truly blessed to be living in a gorgeous place with such lovely beaches, it does get busy - but today it was just nice and peaceful. The dog quite rightly needed a drink and so did I, although we didn't share the bowl today! 

Look at him with his tongue sticking out and if you look really closely (or click on the photo) you'll see the drop of water he's just had in the middle of the bowl!