Dipping a Toe in the North Sea

Arghhh such a backlog of photos to post! I was planning on just doing one more wild north post, but I have too many nice pictures so I'm afraid I'll have to bore you with a couple more. The east coast was an easy drive from where we were staying, so we spent a couple of days exploring; plenty of interesting rock pools and long golden beaches. Surprisingly empty too, especially compared to my local beaches in Dorset!

Just another reason why I fell in love with Northumberland! As well as big green hills, lots of beautiful beaches too :)

Bright Colours Wild Textures

Well hello there, things are still pretty hectic around here! I have just got back from a conference in Portugal (pics to follow!), and am still in between moving, although I hope to finally be settled and reunited with my sewing machine some time next week. In the meantime, here are some pretty close-ups from Northumberland; I have tried to identify the species, the geek in me insisted ;)

Monkey flower of some kind I think

Grasses

Heath Bedstraw

Yellow flag iris

Possibly wild Thyme

Bird's-foot-trefoil

Common spotted orchid

Lichens are difficult to identify!

Green seaweed? Looks like the Grinch's back to me...

Turn Right at Nowhere

I'm back to bore you all with holiday snaps! I spent the last two weeks up in Northumberland, right on the Scotland/England border. It might not sound very exotic but it was brilliant and beautiful and the first proper holiday my boyfriend and I have had together for a fair while. We stayed in a lovely house literally in the middle of nowhere, miles from civilisation and nestled in amongst the very green hills. It was stunning and I wanted to stay there forever! We did re-enter civilisation occasionally when exploring the local area, but we also spent a good amount of time rambling in the wild from straight out of the back door. The best day was walking to Scotland up the tallest hill we could find. I was pathetically excited about going over the border, as I had never been to Scotland, and there is a certain amount of novelty in being able to walk right there! Plus we had a friendly chat with some Scottish people at the top, over the fence that marks the border, which tickled us a little as they were on Scottish soil and we were in England. Good times, can I go back please?

The home valley - our house is in those trees at the bottom

Our lunchtime view looking down at Scotland

Always bringing up the rear!

At the cairn at the top, looking at Scotland