Some More Piccies

Found the memory card, so here are a few more pictures from Jon and Emily's huge ramble around the bottom of Tomlin Head at St Bees. The first is the view of the shipwreck; apparently there's the keel and the boilers of the ship left. The tide wasn't particularly low that day, so you can't see anything all that exciting, but the point is you can't see it from the beach anyway, you have to go round the base of the rocks. Apparently it's known for its conger eels under water.

There were some very strange rock formations, presumably to do with the effect the tide has on the soft sandstone:

Lots of very old carved graffiti in copperplate lettering, lol. And two eerie faces carved into the rocks too.
It was an adventurer's paradise, with lots and lots of starfish and huge crabs to be oohed and aahed over too!

I've only just discovered, researching the jelly fish finds, that St Bees head is apparently well known for sightings of dolphins and harbour porpoises too - definitely something to keep an eye out for next time we go.

***Harry Potter Alert - No Spoilers!***
Emily woke up very early on Saturday wanting to know if our copy of Deathly Hallows had arrived yet. I was sure it wasn't going to arrive until at least lunchtime, but it came really early in the end :-)) We read the first five chapters yesterday and another two today - taking it very slowly, deliberately. The grief is coming thick and fast - think we must be up to about four deaths already. JK Rowling wasn't kidding then when she said it was going to be a bloodbath, lol! I've already been sobbing several times whilst trying to read to Emily :-// She's going to read it herself after we're done, but we like to have the first read together.

I confess to having looked ahead in the book; couldn't help it. I'd already read the first chapter and the epilogue from the "spoiler" version, the one where someone took photos of every page, but of course I wasn't sure until the book arrived whether what I'd read was fake or real. I've now peeked ahead at some of the most significant parts and I'm enthralled. Not quite sure how the reading aloud's going to go, mind you, given my level of sobs already - looks like it gets *a lot* more emotional!

In other news, I forgot to say in the last post that my Mum's had surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome on one of her hands - the other one is due to be done as soon as that's healed. She's all bandaged up but managing very well and is doing the physiotherapy movements to strengthen her hand. Meanwhile, Grandad's angioplasty hospital appointment has finally come through for the 3rd August, so he's happy. He has hospital appointments on the 31st July and the 1st August too, so that's going to be a busy week!

We've identified the culprit who gave Romeo his two nasty wounds - the huge tabby cat who visits our garden and who we used to laughingly call Ju-Ju's boyfriend, because he was at first *very* friendly to her, and she to him. Romeo and he had a huge fight this morning though, before Jon broke it up - looks like things have turned aggressive between the two of them. I don't know why it's happened now, since they had co-existed peacefully enough before. Anyway, this morning, Romeo ended up cowering and with a claw sheath embedded in his shoulder fur, poor thing. Think we'll have to remove the name "Ju-Ju's" boyfriend and start calling the other tabby "neighbourhood thug" instead! He never goes for Cassie Cat or Juliet however, although Ju-Ju is now terrified of him and runs indoors like lightning whenever he appears anyway, so that may be due to lack of opportunity rather than any good grace. I guess it's possible that Romeo is just as aggressive towards him on his territory, and we just don't see that, but at the moment our poor Romeo is very much a wounded warrior :-( trying to be the man in the house. At least the two new kittens will both be males, so in due course he'll have some support!