It isn't exactly a great day for a boat ride, but have to be on the top to enjoy all the sites. Ruth; however, was smarter and stayed on the lower level. She takes awesome pictures. Actually, the only site prior to the island was The Rock. As you can see, it was misty and cool - great hair day - NOT! Since this is a fishing village, there is a lot of history dating way back; however, I never thought about the reason for a lot of fishing was because the Catholic Church, at that time, disallowed eating meat l60 days of the year. I do remember not eating meat on Friday's and other Holy days. Thank goodness we had other options other than fish as well.
On the island are several restored homes of residents. No one has lived on the island since l97l. They have a very nice restaurant from what I was told - we didn't have time to even have a cup of coffee as we hiked around the island for over 4 hours and had to catch the returning boat. It was a fairly easy walk except for some muddy sections and narrow paths but very enjoyable with a lot of foilage - such as the Queen's Lace plant. It was so high, Bruce could barely see us.
The trip to this island is all about the birds. We are overlooking the most accessible Northern Gannet Colony in the World. This; however, is the second largest. Never did hear where the largest one is located. There are over 50,000 breeding pairs. To us, it looked like a million. This was on one side of the island but the small middle picture shows you how the birds are lined up on the cliffs on the other side. It was totally amazing as well as noisy and smelly.
Upclose and personal pictures of the Gannet's. They are just beautiful but remind me of toasted marshmellows. They are everywhere in the air as well as on the ground and they never collide with each other. They each have their own nest and don't dare land somewhere else as they will be chased away. They return every year to the same nest. How they ever find it is beyond me. None of them were fazed by people being around. We were roped off but only two feet away from them.
On our walk were lookout points and trust me, you didn't want to venture any further than that as it was a straight drop off the cliffs. We were lucky and saw a few seals just playing. There were stairs leading down to a rocky beach so it was neat looking up for a change. The stairs in the middle picture were part of our trail. Supposedly, there were 450 steps in one area, but it didn't seem like it -maybe because we were going down vs up.
For me it was a toss up for the Picture of the Day. Bruce was inside one of the old buildings and took this picture looking out. What a great view these people had that once lived here. Then again, I took the following picture:
Is she not just the cutest little girl. I tried to get a front picture but she kept turning and I didn't want her parent's thinking I was some strange crazy lady with a camera. She had the biggest brown eyes - just like her Mom. So I will let you decide which you preferred.
It is raining and raining. Just as we were finishing our walk, it started - we got soaked. Came home and jumped in the shower to warm up. It let up for a while but not for long. From what I'm hearing, it isn't going to be any better tomorrow. It will be a travel day but the wind is suppose to be quite strong - no fun there.
Hope you are all nice and dry where you are and enjoying the summer months. Have a great Mercredi (Wednesday) and I will say Au revoir for the last time.
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