Not a Sheep...

You might remember that one night last year we came back to the cottage to find a sheep in our garden. Slightly odd one, that. Last night however we arrived back to find several Red Deer in our garden instead. When we first started staying out here at Sidinish, the deer used to come about half way along the road, but we rarely saw them further down than that. Over the last few years they have been advancing further and further along, and on this visit so far we’ve seen them every day, and relatively close too. On the first evening they were on the hillside just opposite, and yesterday morning they were in next door’s garden, munching happily on their (it must be said rather well manicured) lawn.  You have to be very aware of them when you’re driving about at dawn & dusk – we’ve regularly seen them leap fences and run straight across roads, and they’re a good size – if one of those collided with your car you’d well and truly know it. To watch though, or to photograph, they’re beautiful animals. I suspect there’s going to be a LOT of pictures of our little local herd from this year’s trip.

You’ll notice a few spots of rain in these shots. After the torrential downpour on Saturday morning we’ve seen relatively little rain since – although the winds have been quite strong, as in, strong enough that we struggled walking against it yesterday.  You get quite used to that up here though – the 45mph gusts we’ve had over the last 36 hours are considered to be just a “bit breezy” and not really worthy of much comment. It often surprises folk who realise we are visitors how much we take the weather for granted – they‘re used to rather more of a fuss being made of the sort of conditions that they simply take in their stride!

Robyn