Woods and water

Another walk on a seldom-used (because it’s bad for ball throwing) trail. This one is a shorter route to the waterfalls – one that doesn’t involve having to clamber up and down a very steep hill.

There’s a lot of blow down along this trail as it is close to the shore and takes the full force of the wind. But that means it also has water views.

When we were here three weeks ago (my phone shows I climbed the equivalent of six flights of stairs that day), the smaller of the two waterfalls looked like this.

Now it’s barely a trickle.

The volume of the larger waterfall is also considerably diminished, although this doesn’t stop Joe clambering precariously on to a mossy rock to take yet another photo.

With no ball in play, Georgie is much more interested in sticks. If you pick one up and start to carry it, she has to have it.

Even if that involves being lifted right off the ground in the fight for possession.

It doesn’t even need to be a stick you are carrying.

Although I failed to capture it, she had to leap off the ground to get her teeth into this small branch which she struggled unsuccessfully to rip away from the tree.

Speaking of trees, this is yet another day when we find ourselves in awe of them.

Look at this one.

Four distinct trees growing out of one nurse stump.

And then there was this one.

It is almost impossible to describe what’s going on here, but I’ll try. The original tree was knocked over by the wind, but it still had enough roots in the ground to stay alive. At some point either a seed took root in the original tree or one of the original branches decided to turn itself into a tree in its own right. It sent out a root which decided not to embed itself into the earth, but instead to spread across the ground. 

And then this root decided, fuck it, I’m going up and is now its own little tree. (I did take a video which makes it clearer, but annoyingly, as previously noted, WordPress doesn’t let me add film.) Holy moly.

Georgie, who loves water, tried twice to get us to follow her down to the beach. There is no proper access to the water, so twice we ignored her and called her back. When she tried a third time we decided, what the hell, and scrambled down a steep, muddy slope. Worth the scramble because, you know, the view.

Would have been a good idea to have brought some sticks down to the beach.

Unfortunately these are the only throwable objects, which wouldn’t have done Georgie (or her teeth) any good. Instead she waited forlornly for something to chase into the water.

Next time, Georgie.