Misty, Warm, Still and a generous sprinkling of Silence …

…. that is what greeted me on today's outing to the LaHave Islands and Crescent Beach.

With the tide at an extreme low, the smell of sea on the islands reminded me of the familiar salt air fragrance that I grew up with and thoroughly adored on many visits to the North West Highlands of Scotland.

Crescent Beach also had a strong salt air smell today. Sadly, I think after six years here in the South Shore, I have detuned a little and lost some of the sensitivity to the smell of the salt air, which always seems so obvious to the out of province visitor.

The silence on the beach today was only broken by the excitement of a local dog who was having an absolutely wonderful time in the water, fortunately that did not bother another local, a sanderling on his beach wander.

While sitting on My Rock to admire the surroundings, I thought to myself ~ “Graeme, it does not get any better than this …” ~ well actually in truth it does, that is guaranteed to happen on my next visit to sit or wander by the sea ~ I have noticed this appears to be a trend ….

Gaff Point revisited ...

Today I did an absolutely beautiful hike at the Gaff Point Trail. This was the fifth time I have done this trail since moving to the South Shore in 2016, all previous adventures were during 2017.

The trail is a 7km loop which begins with a 1.5km walk to the southwest end of Hirtles Beach. The beach is 3km of spectacular crescent-shaped sand and cobble stone shoreline. As for the actual trail itself, it offers some great scenery with a mixture of beach, estuary, forest, rugged coastline and huge waves.

Like my past visits to Gaff Point, I took a slight detour and went to Sandy Cove (the Secret Beach). The cove with its neat little beach is tucked away between some very steep cliffs and is accessible by way of scaling down a bank with the aid of some frayed rope tied to some trees above, unlike my last visit I decided not do the rope scaling today.

When I arrived at Hirtles Beach the tide was just about to hit its peak. I spent my first few minutes watching a couple of Harbour Porpoises not too far off in the calm waters providing some morning entertainment,  unfortunately I did not get any pictures of this I wanted instead to fully enjoy the show.

Around all sides of the trail, the waves did not disappoint they were spectacular to look out, big and crashing over the rocks, which provided me with lots of photo ops.

By the time I completed the hike with some additional off the trail rock climbing, the tide on the beach was almost hitting its low exposing more sand than cobble stone.

It was a very good and thoroughly enjoyable day out, perhaps the best one this summer ….

Another day another wander ...

 An afternoon wander at Rissers in bright, warm but windy conditions.