Low water on the Holy Loch

I love this view of the head of the Holy Loch - acres of mud flats where the River Eachaig enters the loch, mud flats that disappear when the tide comes back in. There are bird hides down there, and apparently a wide variety of waders and such like, though I only know this from hearsay. In all our 46 years living in these parts, it's a bit I've never explored. 

The Holy Loch, of course, was for the first 20 or so years of our time here, the site for the US Navy Site One, where a mother ship, floating dock and land support looked after several nuclear submarines and their crews and families. The Americans called it "Holy Loch" and it took on sinister connotations. It was foreign soil, and every time I went near its shores - at least on the Sandbank side - I felt I was trespassing. This could have had something to do with my position in the local CND, of course ...

Today we were in Kilmun Arboretum, an extraordinary place that we take for granted. There are exotic rhododendrons coming on in corners, eucalyptus trees in every stage of growth, including babies in wired-off enclosures and a newly-fallen giant that has peeled off its main stem in a gale and now lies chopped into neat rounds near its scarred parent. There are areas where diseased trees have been cut down and burned, and foot-mats to clean off any diseased spores that the unwary walker (or dog) may have picked up. 

It's also where we go to catch the last sun on the hillside, as here.