RNLI Rescue.

Wild and very windy today with less rain than yesterday.

I'm going out of chronological order to start with this afternoon's drama. Having had a busy day I was sitting with my feet up when I saw my neighbour rushing up the garden. When I went out she told me that she thought she could hear somebody in the sea shouting for help. Sure enough there was a guy in the water calling for help. There were a number of people on the cliff already on their phones to the coastguard so there wasn't anything else we could do. As we watched a chap lying on a paddleboard was making his way towards the guy needing help. He eventually got to the 'casualty' (that's what they are called by the rescue services) who being unable to see much due to the high waves had carried on calling for help. We could see that although he was in a wetsuit he only had a bodyboard with him.  This was definitely not the day to be out with a bodyboard but city folk don't know.

A lady on the cliff told us that the rescuer had already been out and taken a first casualty to the shore. We watched as he helped the guy we could see onto his paddleboard and they waited for the RNLI who had launched the lifeboat and were coming to get them. Both of the men were taken to shore and the orange paddleboard was left to be washed onto the beach by itself. There was a group of people on the beach waiting to start their paddleboard lesson so I guess the rescuer was their instructor. I will find out more details from my inside source aka Dave. (It doesn't show well on the photo but there was a chunk of rainbow in the gap between the hills in the distance.)

And now back to my day - it's Friday so of course I had my riding lesson, on Cadno again and it all went very well. It was a bigger class, seven of us and all the work was in trot. We practised going from trot to halt and back to trot while keeping the horse nicely rounded on the bit. Cadno having done it all before has a tendency to anticipate so sometimes we trotted straight across the school rather than coming to a halt so that he had to listen to me rather than do the exercise by himself. We finished off by trotting shallow loops down a long side with the horse bending first in one direction, then another and then back to the first direction. Cadno and I did this excellently.

Then it was time for some shopping at Morrison's and afterwards at Charlie's where I bought new wellies, £19 and those were the cheapest. Some wellies cost over £100! While I was there I treated myself to more plants. The sedum (Cherry chocolate) was in the half-price corner and I had been intrigued by the Calocephalus Brownii when I saw it the last time I was there. The Artemisia Nana looked so lovely I just had to have it.

In my bid to avoid processed foods I decided to have another go at making chocolate brownies. The first time I did this recipe it was way too sweet so I cut back the sugar, maybe a little too much. I made the full amount this time as Peter expressed a desire for brownies, who knew? I cut it up and half of it is now in the freezer for another day. (Those squares are the remaining chocolate set into the top before baking.)