Portobello Beach Edinburgh Day 334

High tide at the Joppa Esplanade Plaza. The sea is calm and struggles to reflect a watery sun. A sun that I suspect will be in short supply today. Our Slovakian based visitor enjoyed being beside the seaside in marked contrast to the central European location of Bratislava where she lives and works. We walked on the beach late last night and marvelled at the large low red moon clinging to the slopes of Berwick Law like an illustration from a Transylvanian picture book. A UFO loomed over Fife and shone a spooky beam of light right across the Forth : its shaky reflections rippled on the Portobello sands like an errant moonbeam. It hovered there long enough to make us wonder if it really was an alien intervention. A quick check on a well known phone app, however, confirmed that this was not really an alien craft but a cheap and cheerful Irish Airline (B737-800) inbound from an airport called Torp* in Norway - hence the less common tranist across Fife - and its landing lights illuminating a silvery path from Kirkaldy to Portobello.

* This airport is the low cost portal for Oslo although it is 118 km south of Oslo