Well the boys have gone and I shall miss them (the bullocks that is). I used to love singing to them. Most of the cattle now will be going in for the winter as the ground gets too wet. The silage harvest was good this year so the farmers should have plenty of feed for them. The last remaining dairy farm close to here have taken their cattle in too and you should hear the noise, the cattle obviously aren't very pleased about it, but I am sure they will get used to it, at least they will be warm and dry.
It was my Dad's 89th birthday last week so I went to stay with Mum and Dad for the evening. A very lovely (quiet) celebration (apart from lots of phone calls from friends and family). Seems amazing that he has achieved such an age and is still really quite fit, still drives and cooks and doesn't look 89 at all. Wonder if I have inherited his genes (I have his stature, but won't go into that much!).
On Sunday we h
ad a (rare) nice day so we (myself, M, our two friends and their two little girls) walked from Bude to Northcott beach (the next beach up from the beach on the North Side of Bude which is called Crooklets) along the cliff top. It isn't a scary cliff top walk but a nice stroll though a field. Then as the tide was going out we walked back along the beach. It is about 2 miles round trip but of course will little girls takes a bit longer as you have to do rock pooling, mucking about in the sand and trying not to get water over your welly tops when paddling in the surf. It was quite a windy day and the surf was quite good. No surfers on Northcott beach but a few kayaks on Crooklets and someone riding their horse. Used to do this when I was at school and it is lovely, makes me think I would like to talk up riding again.The North Cornwall beaches are beautiful and with a good spring low tide you c
ould quite easily walk from Bude to Sandymouth (2 miles one way) and possibly to Duck Pools and then back along the top. The cliffs are amazing and I have tried 
to take some photos. Sadly the rock pools didn't give up much bounty; there are a lot of mussels on the rocks but they are very small and probably not worth bothering with. We did find some quite interesting items on rocks, one looked like some kind of egg and the other almost like a coral formation formed from sand. It might have been a home for something, a worm or beetle, very beautiful though.I was supposed to have had this week off but seem to be busy with catching up with various bits of paperwork. We were planning to do a bit of beach fishing tomorrow but judging by the weather forecast I think it will be another day indoors - hey ho.
