It has been eight months since I last really wrote in this blog. I think a good six months I was living alone in Ventnor in a tiny musty bedsit striving to learn my new job with National Trust at Newtown and also finishing my MSc. project with had been two years outstanding. So many different experiences and changes in these eight months that I had to search hard for a photograph to summarise this entry.

I have chose a photograph of the quay at Newtown Harbour as I have had a few challenges going out in the small boat and tying it up afterwards. I still have much exploration to do of the estuary waters.

Also, we have now moved! We are living together and sharing the good times (wedding fairs, dinners with good food and a business trip to Korea) along with the bad times (long travel to do anything on the mainland, Samuel being kept late at work)

But today on the 1st November I feel much more alive and with so much time to myself I hardly know what to do with it. at noon I went for a walk outside. Along the Rolls Hill Road (six cars going by) and through Whippance farm track to the seaside at Thorness Bay. I love this walk already. Not the car part...but reaching the shore at low tide. Today with the sunny weather, about 15*C average temp. it says on the net. I saw three groups of Brent Geese Feeding at the water's edge that must have arrived for the winter. They all appeared to be the pale-bodied form. In the first group I counted 35 geese, then 29 then 30. I saw about three Curlews, one feeding with each group. En route to the shore I heard and saw a meadow pipit churping and saw 4 collared doves and a couple of rooks resting in an oak tree in the field after the farm. A Crow or two were around too. In amongst the seaweed were at least 7 turnstones and a beautiful white Little Egret trying its luck.

I saw a red admiral today as well. Not bad for November. My general knowledge of wildlife has increased exponentially since arriving at Newtown to work. This year I saw many things for the first time including an Osprey, Ringlet, White Admiral and Silver-Washed Fritillary Butterflies, a long-winged conehead cricket and a singing Nightingale, a tall sprouting Ivy Broom Rape and many other natural history wonders.