Bird Shit Island & swimming by Skomer

Lots of scrolling for you today as I've posted four photos! Had a wonderful day on our friend Clive's boat to Grassholm, about 15 miles off Broadhaven and home to one of Britain's largest gannet colonies, hence its local name. Downwind the smell of the sh*t is pretty appalling but as there was little wind today it was quite localised & we avoided it as much as possible. You'll have to enlarge the photos to see the birds properly.
Gannets are magnificent, elegant birds that we only see as singles or pairs close to shore, it was wonderful to see them en masse with large flocks coming in, in V formation, from the ocean. The boys had a good days fishing, catching mainly pollack and coalfish, all of which were released back into the sea. The sea itself was an amazingly flat calm as you can see from the photo.

On the way back we stopped off at South Haven, a quiet cove on Skomer Island. There we all dived in for a swim. The water was cold initially but ok once you were used to it. As you see there were several other boats there.

We were surrounded by wildlife. Canadian geese and rabbits looked down from the grassy slopes of the island, puffins flew around us, spider crabs, in abundance crawled beneath us and in the water were sandeels, jellyfish (they only stung a little bit!) and a seal. The seal was quite curious, the two little blobs in the distance in this photo are me and the seal. Unfortunately the zoom on the camera has stopped working and as its only a very old 1 megapixel camera & enlarging the photo just gives two big blobs so you'll have to believe me!

Anyway another great day and probably the best weather this year.

Elvie