Blue Skies & Haar

During yesterday's beautifully sunny weather, we saw as much Joint Warrior action in the air as out to sea.  This RN helicopter came over just after 2.30pm, flying north.  It looks as if it might be one of the newly-introduced Merlin Mark 2s.

Shortly after four, this smart dark blue jet flew in the opposite direction. It was travelling unusually low for a civilian aircraft, and an internet search identifies G-FRAI as a Dassault Falcon 20 of Cobham Leasing used by the Royal Navy in their Fleet Replenishment and Direction Unit. These planes also jam ships' radar enabling fighter aircraft to attack.

As the afternoon wore on and a light northwesterly wind rose, so banks of haar started to roll into the northern end of the Sound of Mull, and we began to hear the moan of ships' foghorns away to the northwest.  Out of this appeared an old friend, M108 HMS Grimsby.  We saw her going north on 13th April.

Shortly afterwards, M39 HMS Hurworth, a Hunt class mine hunter, followed Grimsby down the Sound, with the haar thickening around her.

A few of us looked out after dark last night - which is now pretty late as it isn't fully dark until after 11.00pm - in the hope of seeing some of the Lyrid meteor shower, but by that time the mist had clamped down on us, and....

....we woke to a grey, damp morning with beads of dew catching onto sheep's wool and....

....onto any cobwebs strung across the heather.