16th February - Pendeen

I don't know what it is about the cottage but for some reason I seem to struggle with sleep when I'm down here. After last night's problems, predictably I awoke in the middle of the night again. This time, however, rather than lying in bed fretting I got up immediately and went to another room where I did a good session of EFT. For those of you not familiar with this, it stands for Emotional Freedom Technique and is a weird process of self-tapping whilst saying positive things (see the web-site for more details). My VLW swears by it and used it to cure a severe bout of insomnia last year and I've now taken to using it in all sorts of situations with great affect - it really is quite amazing! After about half an hour of tapping out all aspects of my insomnia that I could think of I came back to bed and was soon fast asleep.

After our usual morning cup of tea in bed whilst putting the world to rights we decided on a local Pendeen day today as there were some DIY tasks that needed doing; we'd also arranged to meet up with our handyman at the cottage early afternoon so we couldn't stray too far today anyway. I started off doing the initial preparation for a part of our bedroom that needed re-painting and then whilst that was going off I went out for a little walk around Pendeen. There were the usual two Ravens and pair of Chough and various other bits and bobs but nothing particularly out of the ordinary and I didn't see my Black Redstart. Still it was nice to be wandering about the place re-acquainting myself with its various nooks and crannies.

The two Pendeen Chough

Back at the cottage I did a little bit of office work until lunch and then we met up with our handyman to discuss some jobs that we wanted doing. After that I did the next layer of preparation on my painting and then we decided to head out for an afternoon walk. Just as we were getting ready the Black Redstart appeared in the field next to our cottage and I did my best to take a photo though it was rather distant.

This photo doesn't really do justice to what was a great looking bird

As it was getting late we opted for the usual loop down to Geevor then up into Pendeen and back down to our cottage. We normally stop off at Heathers Tea Shop on this route but a bit of Googling seemed to indicate that it wasn't presently open so we went for the Geevor café instead, managing to get there just in time for a quick tea before it closed for the day. In Pendeen we discovered that Heathers had closed for good and was up for sale. A sad day indeed!

A sad day as Heathers was much loved by visiting birders

We wandered back to the cottage as the light started to fade and I did a bit more of my painting work before heading back into Pendeen. I'd been contacted by a reader of my blog who also was a birder with a cottage in Pendeen who'd suggested a drink in the North Inn. One aspect of birding that I always like is how you can meet with a total stranger and have loads to talk about and we passed a very pleasant time supping our beer and regaling each other with our birding tales. Then it was back home for dinner and time to put our feet up in front of the telly after what had been a low key but productive day.