As I sat reading in the main sitting room this morning I could feel the tightness of sunburn on my face after yesterday's visit. Despite the weather not being overly hot the sun here is strong, even during the winter months, the time I had previously visited. I think it has something to do with cleanliness of the air here and it was something I had forgotten.
Today I simply planned to enjoy the fresh air with a walk along the Pembroke peninsula on which Stanley is located. This would allow Emma to run Masataki to the airport while Nigel worked. I had also agreed to take their black Labrador Gibson with me.
Emma dropped Masataki in town for last minute shopping then took me along the road and track that led to the rust stained Pembroke lighthouse at the most easterly point on the islands. I had come here on my previous stay in the Falklands and remember going to the top on a still, dismal and grey day where pools of mercury from the floating bearing and broken glass from the reflector still lay around the floor, a consequence from the conflict five years before. Today the wind was blowing hard and the sun was out and I would have needed a key to open the lighthouse door (and would have had to pay ten pounds at the local museum for the privilege). After visiting the memorial to the sunk container ship Atlantic Conveyer, a massive propeller at the tip of the rocky peninsula just behind the lighthouse, it was time to head back towards Stanley.
I followed a route along the coastline, walking among tussock grass and dunes with Gibson running ahead and enjoying everything fresh air and nature had to offer a dog. The view of the shore - sometimes rocky and inaccessible, sometimes pebbled or sandy - came and went as my route took me down amongst dunes and then out again. I came across a small sandy bay of white sand and clear turquoise seas and enjoyed the scene while Gibson enjoyed the water then it was off again towards the west and Stanley with the wind directly against me.
After an hour the landscape had flattened somewhat to become more peaty with shrub and grass cut through by narrow, dark rivulets running through to the sea and dotted with the occasional small black pond inhabited by ducks. I crossed grassless patches of peat and waded through the ankle high, white flowered 'diddle dee' from which any number of ground nesting birds flew off as I approached. In the distance I could see the windsock of the small Stanley airport that sits in the centre of the peninsula and on my left a mile off I could look down on the full white arc of Surf Bay from where I was to be collected.
A short while later I was picking my way down through steep sandy slopes to get down to the Surf Bay beach. I walked along the water's edge under blue skies as the wind whipped up the powdery, dry white sand higher up the beach, swirling it around like mist. As I walked, Gibson played in the sea until we eventually reached the far end of the bay, climbed up onto the higher grass and awaited our pick up.
The afternoon was spent relaxing in the summer sunshine and helping with gardening chores. A rose bed and the gravel frontage to the offices at the back of Government House were both weeded and then it was time to relax while Nigel headed to Mount Pleasant to collect his sister and nephew. Once more we collected vegetables from the massive garden and communally prepared food for a dinner which was again enjoyed with drinks in the formal dining room. And so another Falkland Island evening slipped away.
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