Biscuit Day.

Morning rain eventually cleared to give us a dry and brighter day. As we ate our breakfast we suddenly noticed that the window was covered with small flies (large (black)green flies?), maybe 60-100 of them. Yesterday's warmth must have triggered a mass hatching but thankfully they were on the outside.

I had my prescription form to drop off at the doctors so when the rain stopped off I went. That of course also meant a walk on the beach. 

I wore my jacket in case of more rain but it was so warm that I could feel the sun on my back and before long not only had my gloves returned to my pocket but I'd unzipped both my jacket and fleece. The tide was out so I was able to stride out at a good pace along the sand. A lot of sand had been brought in by the last high tide completely covering the stumps of the petrified forest. 

I soon reached the first of the rock piles and on investigation of the seaward tip decided to be cautious and went over the sandy bar behind it. 

The next rock barrier looked better (above) even though at times the waves came right up (below) and by judging my timing I was able to walk round. However I hadn't realised that the rock pile made a sort of cove there and unless I was going to climb the rocks there was a second point to negotiate. This was definitely too deep for me so I had to backtrack. I'd gone quite far up the beach anyway so I went over the shingle and out through one of the passageways to the High Street. The rock reef, groynes and breakwaters were only installed 10 years ago along with 25,000 tonnes of shingle added to the existing bank and 15,000 tonnes of sand to help prevent coastal erosion and flooding. You can read more about it here.

Once I got home it was time for more baking. It doesn't look a lot but it took all afternoon to bake and decorate the gingerbread and chocolate spiral biscuits. The chocolate spirals are a variation of the two tone biscuits I usually make. Instead of cutting two concentric shapes then switching over the inner shapes to get a contrasting rim I rolled two rectangles then placed them on top of each other before rolling them up like a miniature Swiss roll. That was then put in the fridge to harden and then I used a sharp knife to slice the roll into biscuits. They looked good but after inexpertly icing the gingerbread I felt I had mastered making dots and used the left-over icing to put white dots on the chocolate spirals.

Oh and the builder didn't turn up today. I'm guessing the supplies hadn't arrived. Let's hope they're here on Monday.