Selfies at Sanna

Our two granddaughters have arrived for week's stay so, while their parents were cycling to Swordle, we took them to Sanna, the rain becoming heavier almost as soon as we parked, pitting the puddles beside the trackway at the back of the beach.

These puddles feed the burns which run through the marram-covered dunes and out across the beach, cutting miniature Grand Canyons across the sand. When the girls were younger we used to bring spades with us and build elaborate dams, the resultant lakes backing far up into the dunes; and we would discuss whether they should become engineers and build real dams.

If the waders, in this picture an oystercatcher and a ringed plover, looked bored with the weather the girls didn't seem to mind too much. One said, "What I like about Scotland is the air and the beaches, but not the weather."

Sanna beach does always offers something of interest. A small flock of sheep was eating the seaweed along the rocks, and the waves had scooped out the sand from one of the small bays towards the northern end, leaving it striped pale orange from....

....the masses of mulitcoloured flat periwinkles, Littorina obtusata, which, for reasons of their own, seem to accumulate in quantities here but nowhere else.

Times have changed. Where once the girls would have brought spades to build dams or spent an hour sifting through the shells, now they bring their iPhones and take selfies, trying to get the sheep in the background to provide interest.

First and third pictures courtesy Hebe using a Panasonic Lumix.