Aberlady Bay

It's been a perfect 'Andy' day.

I started off with a pretty tough Zwift bike ride in the morning. The sweat was pouring off in bucket loads. I had been 'riding' with two Australian blokes on a Zwift event and around the 55-minute mark, they started smashing it. As there was a virtual 35km to go, I hung in the best I could. At 60-mins, they logged off and I was on my own for most of the next hour.

After a frantic panic getting ready, I went for a wee walk with Rosemary so I would spend at least a wee bit of the day with her. Then I headed off to Aberlady on the 124 bus. It was 30-mins late which was most annoying.

I had my dungarees on to protect me from biting insects! I have been bitten a lot lately. But the sun had come out and it was boiling. It was hard work walking with all my camera kit. There were lots of greylag geese honking in the sun. Then I met a Spanish girl who had been on my bus. She was heading through the reserve to camp near the beach as I was taking a picture of a wee white moth.

Next stop was the reeded pond where I found a nice clump of grass and sat down for a wee rest! Woahhh....some type of water fowl came rushing through the reeds like a creature in the film Predator and then let out a giant screech. I s**t myself as it had been completely silent up until that point. It was fun watching a baby moorhen and its mum swim in and out the reeds. 

Then I headed off towards the sand dunes and bumped into another person that was on my bus, an old geezer with a big white beard and belly. He was only wearing swimming shorts and looked a little damp. We had a nice chat about his swim! I was jealous as I fancied one too as I was so hot, but didn't have my trunks and had a packed camera bag too that would bankrupt me if I lost it.

The beach was quiet but I could see a group up in the sand dunes a distance off! Hmmmm...."what's going on here" I thought and decided to check through my binoculars. I wish I hadn't as it was a group of elderly nudists.

I'm always happy by the sea, and it was more fun to be watching sandwich terns rather than nudists. The terns were fishing....flying high above the waves, then hovering and then plummeting to catch juicy wee silver creatures. They are incredibly difficult to photograph and I didn't come close to capturing one. 

Then I wandered up to the first grassy outcrop and lay down in the early evening sun. I was hungry and had a nudist snack, a Naked bar! There were some guillemots out at sea, more terns and a lone gannet. Pied and yellow wagtails flew closer to me. Somehow 90-minutes just disappeared but I needed to get home for dinner. I had two options, either to go back to Aberlady or head to Gullane. I had seen a few nice compositions so chose to retrace my steps and see how they would work.

Thank goodness I did. I spent ages setting up one shot, framing it carefully, getting out my tripod, remote shutter and everything. But it just wasn't working. I gave up and started to walk back. Then the light changed and the image on Blip is the end result. I love it.