Pebbly Beach

Each week in my Walk Middle-earth group on Ravelry I set a challenge for people to take part in, if they feel so inclined. These challenges range from things people have to photograph on their walks, distances that should be covered, a particular time to spend walking, to specifically Middle-earthy challenges. Sometimes they're a combination of two different sorts of challenges.

In my Bullet Journal I have a list of potential challenge ideas but I tend to select them fairly randomly; when I set up the group I asked people which challenges they liked the sound of most and the Photo Challenge was definitely most popular, so I've got rather more of them than anything else. I try to make it fair and pick challenges that will challenge me too (it'd be really easy to think, I've got a busy week at work this week, I'll just challenge everyone to take a ten minute walk).

And this week's challenge was definitely a little challenging.

I'd suggested that people might like to take a walk to their favourite place, take some photos and then share their favourite places with the other members of the group.

It was a good challenge suggestion and I was quite proud of myself for coming up with it. Until the realisation dawned that I would also have to do this walk too.

Saturday ended up being a very lazy day and I didn't get out of bed until after 11am. My favourite place on the island is a little hidden away spot, Calvary Pond, and I planned to pull on my welly boots and trek up there with my camera. But I happened to mention to Mr Click that my proper favourite spot on the island is a little cove out at Kilchattan Bay.

When we first visited the island on holiday, when I was about eight or nine, we stayed at the Bay and one of our explorations took us along to a little beach which I nicknamed Pebbly Beach. It does have a proper and far more boring name, but my name has stuck.

So we headed out there and after walking Tara with Mr Click, I left them both at the car and ventured out to the beach.

And if I'd known what the path was going to be like, I would've picked an easier challenge for myself!

It was very boggy, very muddy, and very slippy. It took me about ten minutes to gingerly pick my way along the path, taking occasional photos (and trying to shield my little compact camera from the rain).

And it doesn't really look like much, especially when the windy is blowing and the rain is pouring down. But I've got many happy memories of playing on that beach. I'd scale the rocks and feel like I was standing on top of the world (now I stand almost level with the top of the rocks and they don't feel so very high at all).

I'm looking forward to when the weather starts to improve so I can go back out there and actually spend a little while there, rather than paying a quick visit and heading off before my thumbs freeze off and I got stranded.