There are evenings when the light just catches your breath. This was one of those evenings. We’d timed this walk at Yellowcraig for low tide – something I’d always advise if you’re visiting for the first time as this beach is so wide and expansive at low tide, while the tide line is high at a very high tide. They’re two entirely different beach walks.
Several weeks back I was having a DM convo with a friend on Instagram. My friend was talking about wanting to write a book, and the struggle of finding the time to write, not only in physical time, but in having the head space to sit and focus. This resonated with me completely. It’s something I’ve struggled with for a long time. Writing for work is different because it’s work, but writing for the pleasure of putting words together and expressing thoughts or experiences – well, that’s a different challenge. Yet, as we were saying, we make time for other things, like Instagram. I devote so many hours there, particularly on the lads’ account, so, as my friend said, why not spend an hour a day writing? Just an hour. How hard can that be?
In my previous post, I mentioned how we’d spent November misjudging how quickly it was going to get dark on our weekend walks, but looking back through photos, I realise we were doing the same in October. As on this walk at Yellowcraig when the clouds were gathering around us, hanging heavy over the Forth with the promise of rain.
I’ve got into the habit of taking more videos than photos now on these coastal walks – not consciously, but then I come to edit the photos and realise I don’t have as many as I would have had months ago. I’m crediting Instagram reels for this shift. Having been monumentally slow to embrace reels, I’m now veering towards them more and more on the lads’ account, albeit less so on my own. Often that 60 to 90 seconds of video feels far more descriptive of what our walks together feel like, with the lads running ahead of me along a beach or winding along the dunes paths. A still photo can feel like a great view, whereas a reel can feel like an adventure. And sometimes that means we’ll come home and I might only have a handful of photos, as here, after this frozen November walk at Yellowcraig.
Just a few photos, as I was mostly taking videos on this walk on Sunday, plus it was so, so cold with the wind chill, my frozen hands had had enough after those videos. But I couldn’t resist sharing these skyscapes.
Do you have certain scenes that you never get tired of photographing? I have a few, the view over Hedderwick Sands (at John Muir Country Park, as in my previous post) being the most obvious, but also every view of Fidra. I started sharing Fidra photos using the tag #TheFidraSeries earlier this year on Instagram, but have many, many more shots – photos I always mean to post but then pause, wondering if people might be bored of the same vista.
But to me this view is never quite the same. The shifting tides, the changing seasons and light – it always feels different. It’s a place that I’ll keep returning to again and again.
Hello and welcome to Copperline. My name is Fiona Reid and this is my blog about coastal living in Scotland.