An Eventful Morning.

It was wet and kind of hazy again this morning but did its best to warm up through the day. That was enough incentive for me to get another lot of washing out on the line though I'm giving it as long as possible (now that it's getting warmer) before bringing it in for ironing.

I woke early, fell asleep and then had such an unpleasant stress dream that I had to wake myself up to get out of the dream. I was pottering around in the kitchen while Peter made the tea when he pointed out that there was spilt milk in the fridge. Yesterday I had to buy a 4L bottle of milk as there weren't any 2L bottles and although I'd screwed the top back on tightly before putting the bottle on its side on a shelf it had still leaked. Thank goodness for kitchen roll! At least it wasn't too bad and hadn't gone down into the freezer or worse still right under the fridge. I was busy cleaning up and taking out the organiser trays (yes, our fridge is organised) when Peter noticed that the porridge which I had forgotten about was burning. Yikes! A quick transfer of porridge into another saucepan and a dishwasher tablet for the burnt saucepan sorted that out for the time being.

 

Having got things under control I went to drink my tea out on the terrace when I saw what at first I thought was a fat, fluffy cat on the cliff grass by our garden gate. It then went down a slope so all I could see was its back (I had the camera by this time) and my next thought was that it was a giant otter or maybe a racoon-dog from the zoo. But of course as soon as I got a better view it was clear that it was a beaver. On a cliff ? Peter stayed watching as it disappeared in the long grass further up while I quickly wrote on some large boxes asking people to keep their dogs on short leads as the cliff is a popular route for dog walkers. I left the boxes at key points on the cliff as I was concerned about beaver and/or dogs ending up over the cliff. My next move was to leave a message with the Osprey Centre as they have a beaver enclosure and also with the RSPCA. And of course put photos on the village FB pages. I've had over 100 reactions to my post and some comments including one from somebody who is part of the Welsh Beaver Project. She came up and had a good look around but there was no further sighting of the beaver. Apparently there are beavers on the Leri (our nearest river) and this may well be a youngster that is looking for new territory. Not that it will find anything along the cliff as the streams which run down to the sea are all tiny. It may well retrace its steps back to the Leri and they can swim in the sea though they don't like to. I wondered how you would lure a beaver into a trap and I now know they like carrots and apples. I'm going to put out some carrots and set up my trail cam tonight to see if it is still around. I had a call back from the Osprey Centre in the afternoon. They only have one beaver now and it has black fur.

There had been lots of meat half-price in Morrisons yesterday, still expensive in my view but I did buy some diced beef. This I have used to make a stew/casserole? in the slow cooker. No recipe, just carrots, parsnips and onions along with some herby tomato base and spices. 

Once the stew was on the go I planted out the plants I bought yesterday before going down for a walk on the beach.

On the beach I walked along under the cliffs so that I could keep an eye out for the beaver even though Kim, the lady from the beaver project had already walked that way checking for beaver tracks.

No signs of the beaver, just a few birds and some interesting rocks.

The photos from our recent rides came through yesterday evening. That's me with the short sleeves on Cody. I think my grin is a bit too manic and I need to work on my shoulders but you can see the marvellous scenery and we were all enjoying ourselves. There are also some short videos including the scary steep track but I need to work out how to copy them from a FB message.