27th: Cronk y Bing – Manx (Isle of Man)

We’d come for the dunes that we hoped would be teeming with orchids and upon first arrival, we thought we were too late. For the first 15 minutes of walking through these stunning dunes we didn’t see a single orchid, or in fact many flowers at all. Then we broke into a completely new area and suddenly there were flowers everywhere.

We had what must have been thousands of orchids, plus loads of other flowers that I’ll have to identify, and they were all pretty stunning. There was lots of other life as well, bees by the dozen, countless other insects, sometimes with huge amounts crammed into one inflorescence. I won’t mention the funnel web spiders looking pretty intimidating, and I wouldn’t want to freak any arachnophobes out!

Once we fancied a break from the overwhelming carpet of natural beauty laid out before us, we looked out to sea and saw gannets and terns diving for fish as well as oyster catchers rooting around in the sand for their own food. Carol really wanted to just spend the whole day in this place. She loves the sea and this was the sea distilled to it’s most welcoming and beautiful. The weather was glorious and it was lovely to be warmed by a sun that has been too absent of late. Sadly we had to make do with staying for lunch as time was limited and we needed to move on.