Things to remember:
- It was a perfectly peaceful and non-contentious overnighting spot last night, but come about 7.00am this morning I became aware of far too many cars passing 'my' peaceful hidey-hole and heading towards the Point of Ayre. Turns out I'd stumbled upon the End-To-End walking race! This - I subsequently discovered - kicked off at 8.00am at the Point of Ayre and saw the competitors heading south down the west of the island to their ultimate finish at The Sound; about 63km away. It was a spectacle, for sure.
- Spent most of the morning out my bike in a sort of training, birdwatching, walking-race-spectating kind of way and had a jolly good time of it. The weather was fair, balmy and still. The feel-good was palpable.
- Post lunch I did a bit of sea-watching and added juvenile guillemots, red- throated divers, Sandwich terns and good numbers of porpoises to the already impressive list of species.
- Mid afternoon saw me at the Curragh nature reserve, a boggy wetland area where there are, amongst other things, wild wallabies that escaped from the nearby animal park some years ago; and which have gone nuts ever since. I didn't see any but I did see an abundance of royal fern, carpets of devils-bit scabious, and hundreds of bees getting their late-summer sugar-rush from it. The bees caught me out at first as they were extremely pale but I think they were just season-faded common carder bees. I also spotted a silver-Y moth here, too.
- From the reserve I headed roughly south and it was evocative to see the tell-tale black-and-white kerbing and people-catching bales associated with the TT course. I even went over the famous grab-air-then-speed-wobble bridge at Ballaugh. Racing at flat-out speeds on these roads is unquestionably certifiably insane. I predict history won't quite believe this event was ever allowed. Actually, scratch that; AI will probably have wiped our species out well before any the chance for future generations to pontificate on the obvious idiocy of such races.
- In order to stay under the radar even more than usual I've headed to the uplands this evening and have bagged what seems to be one of those as-good-as-it-gets type spots. I'm well away from the (virtually deserted) road, am totally out of sight, have massive vistas and - as well as the expected stuff - have seen hen harrier and twite. I won't be adding this one to the Turn2Shite app's database.
- Of which, I am actually contemplating subscribing and adding some spots. They will, of course, be utterly horrible and hopefully result in a wretched stopover. A bit like most of them are and do, anyway.
Post composed at 21:15 on Sunday 13th September from my intended overnighting spot N 54.28803°, W 04.50376° / http://maps.google.com/maps?q=loc:54.28803%2C-04.50376
