Little pieces of heaven

Cut flowers are very sparse here.  Any cultivatable land is used for growing fruit and veg.  Having left behind a garden there is always something in flower (even in mid winter), I miss a vase of flowers about the house.  This is what I found at Stanley Garden Centre on Wednesday. 

  

Big pieces of heaven

For a long time, my dream car has been a Defender.  Having one here was part of the carrot Matt used to persuade me that moving to the other end of the world was a good idea.  We already have one lovely comfortable Land Rover, but it can’t go properly off road as the chassis us too low.

This is what we’ve just bought.  A Rover as they are known here.  We placed a bid when the government were selling off old vehicles and were successful.  Now we need to get more suitable tyres and to get out there exporing!!  I need to fiercely fight my urges to pimp it.  The list of things we could add and alterations we could make is huge and very tempting.

Cape Pembroke

On our first foray off road in our new Rover, we took it out to Cape Pembroke.  We had a lot of fun on the tracks and went for a very blustery walk.  The waves crashing over the rocks were stupendous, but it was cold so we repaired to The Narrows for dinner.

Cape Pembroke Part 2

Saturday morning was beautiful and calm so instead of going out for a drive out to Goose Green, we went to Cape Pembroke again.  

On the Cape is a lighthouse and the key for it is available from the museum in town if you’re organised enough.  The drive out was lots of fun and once there, spent a lovely hour poking about the coastline and loving the view.  

Falkland Grass Wren

As we were walking away, we stopped to say hello to a family walking toward the lighthouse.  They were kind and organised people who had the lighthouse key with them.

We did an about turn and clambered up to the top of the lighthouse after them.  It felt like an amazing end to a wonderful morning.  And then…from the top of the lighthouse we spotted a large pod of Commerson’s dolphins foraging along the coast just below us.  We watched them for ages before leaving to make our way further along the coast.

We watched them as they appeared to shadow us along the coast.  We stopped at a white sand bay and they foraged in the shallows just off shore, keeping an eye on us all the time.  

Anna had spotted a seal and Maya had gone to see it with her.  Matt and I sat on the beach marvelling about what we had seen.  And then a penguin popped out of the sea onto the sand and stood looking at us before waddling toward us to get a better look.  

We couldn’t believe it.  We tore ourselves away and went to see the seal.  It was sunbathing on the rocks and had a blissful expression on its face.