The first thing we’ve learned about the Isles of Scilly (apart from their physical proximity to one another, which surprised and delighted us) is that you are just not prepared for the colours you see here. The sea really is this amazing colour. Apparently it’s because the water is shallow and the bottom is sandy. When you add to this hillsides and hedgerows brimming over with brightly coloured succulents similar to the ones we saw in California last year, the whole place looks like someone has turned the saturation, luminance and contrast up to maximum. Whatever the reason, it looks like we’re not in the UK at all but somewhere much more exotic.

This morning dawned with a burst of sunshine and the two of us awake, up and ready to go out by 8.30am – that’s normally not something we’re over keen on! So, we decided to take advantage of the sea’s millpond-like look and catch one of Scilly’s famous launches to somewhere else (another Scilly, not further afield). We chose an expedition to see Atlantic Grey Seals basking on the Eastern Isles, followed by being dropped on St Martin’s for lunch, a walk along the beach and back ‘home’ to St Mary’s for the evening. Someone had told me the isles are horribly expensive, but I thought a tenner for all this seemed like fab value to me.

St Martins has miles of beach with sand like white powder, sea (see above for colour) and two dogs who thought they’d gone to heaven for the amount of frolicking and general happy play they had.

We found ourselves a wholefood café – just right for a pair of old hippies like us, where they served up home-made bread, proper free-range eggs (like our home-laid ones) and coffee in a tiny café with bees cutting slits in fuchsias to get the nectar without actually climbing inside. It was fascinating to watch.

We’ve been ‘factored up’ so no more sunburn today.

I’ve had trouble choosing a photo to post because I have taken quite a few I like so DM helped me and chose this one. He likes the fact that every so often as you pootle across the sea, you come across little clusters of tightly packed shags sitting on the surface, following the ‘safety in numbers’ principle. There are, for the eagle-eyed, a couple of cormorants in this group too.

The calm-ness of the sea has been a boon to me today and I feel quite the ‘sea dog’ because I’ve survived a day without going green or puking. Archie hasn’t fared quite so well – he’s got himself so overtired from continuous frolicking, ingestion of seawater and his arthritis giving him a bit of gyp, that he’s been a bit on the grumpy side and had to be coaxed off the boat when we got back into St Mary’s harbour. He was like a four year old child, standing there going ‘I’m not getting off, you can’t make me….’. Thankfully, he soon decided that he wanted to be with us more than he wanted to stay on his launch so when we all leaped off, he reluctantly came too. I think they like it here……

Shiva was my subject last year.