Kentra Bay

"Aye, he's going to leave the key for the gate under a stone".

Its a fact as soon as some one gets some one else to do something with out any follow things are liable to go pear shaped; and so it was today.

A great deal of our work is accessed via unpaved estate roads and tracks. To prevent unauthorised vehicular access many of these tracks are defended by locked gates, and clearly administering keys to those who have a rightful reason to be there is almost impossible. I always ask clients ahead of going to site if there are any locked gates to negotiate.
Reasons for being locked out include:
"I thought they would have mentioned if there was a locked gate" That's why I told you to ask!
The key we have been given is for a long discarded padlock which the new game keeper replaced without telling anyone.
Or today the man who was asked to plant a key for us is no longer in local employment and is believed to be away in a fishing boat with his key.

At one point today it looked like we would have to break something to get in before someone with local knowledge directed us to a man who lived nearby who had is own padlock on the gate. So many people have need to go along this track that they all have their own padlocks and the gate is secured with a little bit of wire and a daisy chain of interlinked padlocks.

Anyway we started work about four hours late. This is Kentra Bay and it is notable for its very shallow tidal swept mud flats. A couple of hours earlier all this sea was exposed shore as far as the eye could see, The effect is enhanced by particularly big tides today.