...... or rather night, morning, noon and late afternoon! We start with last night's sunset
then it's on to early this morning. You know that summer is drawing to a close when the swallows start to congregate on the phone wires, getting ready to fly off south for the winter. It has been a good breeding year - I counted sixty of them this morning!
later in the morning when we arrived in Berwick, the dock was a hive of activity, as the ship that came in on Sunday was still there ........
..... and had been joined by another one
when we were walking into town, we stopped to look in the other dock gate and could see this ship was being loaded .....
..... while this one was being unloaded
we had a stroll round town, deciding where to go for lunch. Two places were ruled out as they were a bit pricey, and another one was ruled out before we even looked at the menu in the window - we could hear the customers' conversation out in the street - if they were talking so loudly, it would hardly be a quiet lunch! We finally settled on this tiny coffee shop
where we shared a delicious "French platter". We should have had a wooden board each with our bread and cheese, but as we were sitting at a small table, we had to share one
on Sunday I finished the stitcheries, and yesterday I pressed them and trimmed them
so after lunch we took the stitcheries to a picture framer, and had a long discussion on spacing, mounts and frames. It will be some weeks before we get the resulting picture back, as the framer is very busy. When we got back to the flat, the dock was still very busy, with two machines unloading the ship nearer to us
then, an extra flurry of activity, and the pilot boat appeared
the swans took off towards the opening
closely followed by one of the ships
then, late afternoon, there was a great burst of activity on the remaining ship
and the holds were closed
then we watched in amazement as the pilot boat pushed the ship round ......
........ and round
until it too headed out to sea
to finish - the swans really do get annoyed at all the activity, and every so often one will rise up out of the water and flap its wings in a very disapproving way ....... but usually not when I have the camera to hand. So I was delighted when I captured not one, but two doing it!