· Anglesey ·
I was astonished to see a young woman performing yoga down on the rocks first thing. Fortunately, she’d had the common decency to set her mat down well off to one side, so it was easy for me to pretend she wasn’t there.
There was a more autumnal feel in the air, with the sunlight twinkling off the water a bit cooler than on previous days. Over the next hour or so, about a hundred Sandwich terns passed by, all heading in the same direction, into the wind. They’ll be heading south soon.
After breakfast, we took one of our favourite walks along the clifftop from Porth Wen to Porth Llanlleiana. It was perfect walking weather: bright and breezy and not too hot. As always, we puffed our way up the steep climb from Hell’s Mouth to take in the view from the old lookout post, over towards Middle Mouse, the island known in Welsh as Ynys Badrig, on account of the British-born Saint Patrick supposedly having been shipwrecked there. The island is the northernmost point in Wales.
Autumn fruits were out in abundance as we walked back along the lane. I always count eating my first blackberry of the year as the official start of autumn, which means autumn nearly always begins, as it did this year, during the walk back from Porth Llanlleiana to Porth Wen.
Back at the caravan, I headed down to the rocks, where I found a seal bobbing in the bay. This particular ‘grey’ seal was a mottled brown colour. Go figure. It craned its surprisingly long neck above the waves to take a good look round. A longish, flexible neck will make catching fish easier: think cormorants, sealions, guillemots, grebes, and ichthyosaurs. I could see the seal’s ear, higher than you might expect on its head, level with its eye. I suppose this will make listening for stuff above water easier. No drag-inducing external ear, obviously, just a hole. Its nostrils flared, then snapped shut, like a pair of vertical mouths. I managed to take a few nice photos before it turned and spotted me, immediately crash-diving, never to return.
I pottered around on the rocks for an hour or so until Jen joined me, whereupon I announced my intention to teach her how to catch a crab. Having never been crabbing before, Jen was extremely sceptical we would catch anything with simply a weighted string and a smashed-up limpet on a hook. It might have been forty years since I last went crabbing, but I was confident we’d catch one in under five minutes—because crabs really are that stupid. Just this once, I was right and Jen was wrong.
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