Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Mud,mud,glorious mud!

People are often asking us what it's like to live on Ynys Enlli through the winter.One of the consequences of being so close to the sea is that we escape the extremes of temperature. The arctic blast that has just gripped the U.K dealt us a far softer blow and we only had a few days of frost with barely a dusting of snow. The weather station only got down to O degrees C on a couple of days.However,the one thing we do get plenty of in the winter is...MUD! The situation around the silage feeders gets particularly interesting,as you can see in the pictures below .The ruin in the background is the 12th century Augustinian Abbey.



The Fulmars are back! Over the last couple of weeks we have begun to notice the fulmars returning to their nesting ledges on the east side of the mountain. Although the Winter has some way to run yet,the birds give us our earliest sign of approaching Spring.


The history books tell us that some of the caves on Enlli have been used by Saints past as dwellings. We took the opportunity of a fine day on Sunday to go and explore one or two. Ben thought that this particular cave looked promising but I wasn't convinced that we could get enough living space inside for the four of us plus three dogs...! Besides which, Rachel found a few cave-spiders already in residence and didn't fancy sharing...




1 comment: