Last night we messaged Colin via Whatsapp to book the 12:30 ferry crossing to Bardsey Island. After breakfast, we went to the Spar and bought lunch (pork pie, crisps, apple). The we drove ten minutes to the Whistling Sands at Porthor, on the north coast.
The bay was deserted apart from a lone fisherman on the rocks.
The sands make a squeaking sound when you walk on them. Apparently there’s only one other place in Europe where this happens. It’s due to the shear stress on the grains of sand.
There were lots of Mermaid’s Purses on the tide line.
There was a Sedge Warbler at the car park, nice view, in the reeds.
Then we drove up to Porth Colman and walked along the coast path for a bit before heading to the car park at the top of the lane at Porth Meudwy.
We walked down the lane ten minutes to the small cove we’d passed through on our walk yesterday. When Colin arrived we got on the boat, sat on a trolley on the beach. The boat could take twelve people max and there were eleven of us. We waited until 12:30 for Lucy, who had booked, but she didn’t turn up. Colin thought that was odd as Lucy was a sensible name.
Colin towed the boat into the water with a rusty old tractor, then clambered back onto the boat.
Among the people in the boat were two Dutch birdwatchers, two Panamanian women and a young RSPB staff member, there with her mother, who worked at exotic-sounding island locations in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
We stopped for a bit at the eastern edge of Bardsey Island to look at the Guillemots, Razorbills, Puffins, Kittiwakes, etc, up on the cliffs and in the water.
Then we docked and a tractor pulled us up the slipway and we disembarked.
We walked out around the lighthouse.
Lots of Wheatears, Linnets, Oystercatchers, Whimbrel. And lots of seals.
A friendly resident dog kept us company for a bit. It trotted ahead and kept checking back to make sure we were coming. When we stopped, the dog stopped.
Then we walked up to the ruined abbey, once a destination for pilgrimages, and then round the western side of the island.
We saw a couple of solitary Choughs (or one Chough, twice).
Back near the boat, a Corncrake was calling from a patch of reeds. J glimpsed it flying (probably).
The table next to us at dinner had four Canadian couples celebrating a 60th birthday. They were staying in the restaurant-less gwesty across the road. After dinner we were sat in the bar and two of them came up to us separately to apologise for the noise they had been making, though it wasn’t loud and hadn’t bothered us at all. It was interesting to chat to each of them, though, about British Columbia and the weather, etc. They were going to Bardsey Island tomorrow.