6:45am

Door latch sticks a little, sand grits along tiled floor and a sigh of cool morning air meets the warmth of the kitchen. Now outside, I hear the sea washing the beach at Quay, bird chirp and duck chatter, nothing else.

Movement in the house, a door opens, “where’s my school jumper?” Bangs shut again.

I look toward the fire-like glow that burns its way from the blackness of the East.

Every surface; leaves, rocks, windows, the sea, my face, glows in its amber reaches.

9:30am

A perfect morning for a winter swim challenge, the rocks of Little Merrick patiently sit in still water.

There’s not a breath of wind, the silky water, clear as glass, slowly numbs the legs as I walk deeper.

It’s best to just take a breath and dive into the sea, not let it steal the air from your lungs, and start swimming.

Bands of icy cold tighten around my head, arms and legs, I keep swimming. The water darkens but it’s so clear I can still see the waving fronds of thong weed and limpet studded rocks below me.

I reach the rocks, the slight swell raises me up onto the rock, the rough barnacles rasping on my numb skin.

The silver sun to my right dazzles my sight as it lights the sea. To the left on the larger Merrick rocks, a group of about fifty oyster catchers sun themselves, splashes of white on the grey granite.

Back into the cold sea with a not so elegant splosh. My hands and feet are pinched in icy pain and I swim strongly towards the shore. Powerful, water-pulling strokes and quick breaths in an attempt to warm the body.

With the slightest ray of warm sun thawing my skin, I look back at the rock I’ve just been sitting on. It is a world away and I feel far enough for a winter swim, my feet are numb, fingers stiff and clumsy but heart and mind warmed by a wonderfully wild swim.

Following my last blog, reporting on Dina and her piglets, I’ve had a request for a picture of them. I only have one of the piglets but they are super cute so enjoy.

Quite a bizarre day we’ve had on the farm today, one that’s brought a light heartedness to life.

Last Sunday evening our dear old pig Dina gave birth to our record litter of thirteen piglets. Nothing too unusual about that, but these piglets were not planned.

During the summer we had made a difficult decision to stop breeding pigs due to the difficulties with shipping and the economics of it all. Dina, however, had other ideas and managed to jump out of her pen, trot some quarter of a mile or so and jump into the boars pen for one last night of passion.

After Graham had put this story on Facebook we have been inundated with press enquiries. Graham has retold the story on BBC Cornwall and this evening it is appearing on the South West news.

It’s made a lot of people chuckle. Meanwhile Dina and the babies are oblivious to their fame and continue to feed and sleep and feed and sleep and so on.

Sometimes as an adult in today’s world it can feel as if the responsibility for everything lays upon your shoulders. Not only do we have the responsibility of bringing up our children as best we can, keeping a roof over our heads and food on the table, but the planet is in crisis, politics is in crisis. There’s too much plastic, too much waste, too much social media and we all have to strive for the perfect life, health, body and mind.

Or this is how it can sometimes feel.

For sure we can all do our bit to help our world around us be as good as we can make it but once in a while it’s just good to have a laugh, have fun.

Be a child again, be a little wild and play.

Ruthie and I feel in the mood for a whooping fun swim so with high tide approaching we march on down to the quay.

We launch ourselves into the water with flying star jumps (Note to self…dont whoop as you enter the water). When we surface, great giggling, beaming smiles and whoops of freedom bring on a sense of elation.

We swim out into the bay a little. Then turn, it’s about 4:30 and the daylight is darkening quickly. Behind us the island is beginning to light with windows and fires puff gentle spires of smoke. From the chill of the water the island feels cosy and loved.

We dive down to where there is no noise and barely any light, before bursting through a surface of choppy, windswept water into the pale dusk sky.

In an attempt to avoid leaving our watery play park, we stay in the swell of the waves as they break over the quay. I try to capture the colour of the water in my mind but it seems impossible. It is green, grey, blue, silver, gold and clear all at the same time. All I know is that it is beautiful, mesmerising and fun.

In all the serious of life here’s to a little bit of fun!

Evening light filters everything in a frosted pale wash. Flip flops crunch along the sand track toward the quay.

A wren, a blackbird, several wood pigeon and a whole gang of squabbling sparrows dart around me.

The breeze touches my skin, drifting like a deep sigh, not warm, yet not cold, just softly felt.

Delicate, naked agapanthus flowers catch my eye.

It’s a generously high tide, frothy swirls of water wash across the end of the quay. In the channel there is no sign of the many tiny islands and rocks that lay on the sea bed. I know they are there but now they are hidden, engulfed.

It brings a thought popping into my head, that old saying, out of sight out of mind. I am terribly guilty of this flaw. Tonight it makes me think about our world, our nature. Just because we can not see the devastation to the rainforest, the floating islands of plastic in our oceans or the human inflicted misery on our wildlife, doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

Just like the hidden rocks at high tide, I may not see but I know.

I must, I think to myself, try to make a concerted effort to be much more mindful of the environments I can’t see as well as those that I live with.

Anyway, enough of the talking to, time for a swim. There’s only one way to do it today, a leap off the quay. I plunge myself into my favourite world of green sea and silver bubbles, bobbing to the surface for air.

A straight forward, arm stretching swim out among the buoys, feeling the light disappear, watching the ocean darken.

A few dives and tumbles to move the body and free the mind before heading back to shore.

A great way to end the day.

You think I would know better by now, forty years into life, that lessons are learnt in small steps.

Three days ago, nausea, accompanied by clammy palms and shallow breath, threatened to overwhelm me as I arrived at the writing retreat.

I hadn’t felt so nervous about meeting new people and sharing an interest since pony club camp twenty eight years ago.

One of my biggest fears was that Bryher inspires me so much. The wondrously wild and beautiful environment that is my home is what creates musical words in my head. How would I be able to write here?

I really shouldn’t have worried so much. Not only have all the hosts and guests been warm and friendly, patient and encouraging, but the house was nestled into the most magical little woodland. Complete with a small yet feisty stream that I could hear bubbling and crashing from my bedroom, as it made it’s speedy way to Lamorna Cove and the open sea.

Plenty of opportunity for woodland wonders and dips in the cool water.

A wet walk to the Merry Maidens, rain fell straight and heavy. Along the road, tiny rippled rivers of muddy water ran, sploshing along with the rythmic thud of my boots on tarmac.

The rain was not enough though. It couldn’t quell my restless craving to be in cold water.

On my return to the retreat, I hurriedly rid myself of clothing and wrapped in towels sneaked down to the calling stream.

Soft-soled feet pressed bare against the hard gravel until, once under the canopy of dark, dripping trees, the layers of squelching, decomposing leaves softened the ground.

Stepping down over the wet, moss-covered stones, my feet moulded themselves to the contours of the rocks, careful to grip tight.

I momentarily worried about pine needles or brambles slicing through skin, but soon my feet were too chilled to feel and I too content to care.

Near to where the stream joins another, stepping stones continue the path deeper into the wood. Here a little waterfall seemed the perfect place to slip into the stream.

Naked and feeling the rain and leaves tickle bare shoulders, I stepped down into the cold water, which after all the rain was a torrent of wild, foaming bubbles.

It was deliciously refreshing. The air a deeply damp, earthy mulch. The rush of the stream whooshed through my head.

My dip was short, shallow but oh so sweet.

The house when I returned was warm, lit by soft corners of cosy light and silent, except for the stairs that creaked a now familiar welcome.

A friend told me as I left Bryher she thought the retreat would change my life, and she was right. I have been introduced to so much about the craft of writing, met new friends and enjoyed the most relaxingly creative time I’ve had in a long while.

I just need to trust those little stepping stones in life learning and keep leaping, one stone at a time, further along the writing path.

It’s been wild winter weather on Bryher today, a thrilling, temple aching north wind that with the next gust could lift you off your feet and blow you away. Driving downpours scourge from east to west whipping legs and neck with icy lashes.

Looking westward from the rear of the farmhouse, the sea is a wild, rolling torment of white water and foaming spray that is flung high towards the silver grey skies. The sun momentarily glows a frosted white before being once again engulfed by thick grey cloud.

Ruthie and I head for Popplestones, here the sea is a frenzy of wind driven water, the ebb and flow of the incoming tide hurling and dragging great waves across the shifting sand.

The roar and rush of the wind, the sand blown again my legs like a thousand piercing needles and the swell of the sea, is almost deafening, overwhelming and intimidating. However, once in the water, which actually feels warmer than the icy wind, and amazing sense of peace, silence and being at one with the sea fills us with enjoyment. Silence doesn’t have to mean you are without any noise, it can mean the silence in your soul. In the water I feel a peace and silence in my soul that just recalibrates the blood, the heart, the mind. In her book Women Who Run With the Wolves, Clarrisa Pinkola Estes writes

“…the sound of wind through a great loom of trees is silence, the crash of a mountain stream is silence. For her thunder is silence, the natural order of nature, which asks nothing in return, is her life giving silence.”

We laugh, whoop, float and drift in an ocean of towering waves and frothy splattered water. Salted spray fills our eyes and nostrils, each way we turn another face full of sea smacks at us.

And then a moment when the waves and the noise doesn’t matter, we watch skyward as a gull hovers, dips and glides on the wind. A sculpted silhouette of beautiful movement.

As the sun sets behind Gweal Hill, with daylight fading fast, we clamber out of the sucking swell, spat out by the sea onto the sand, the icy wind immediately cuts to the bone so we run for towel and woolly hat.

I wonder to myself how such a crazy, wild and exhillerating experience can leave me feeling so calm and at peace.

The harvesting of seawed for spreading on the asparagus beds is one of my favourite winter jobs. For many different reasons, the low impact, sustainable and local sourcing of rich feed and mulch for the crops, the pure beauty in the autumnal colours of browns, oranges, pinks and greens, and the feeling of a connection to a Bryher of times gone by…albeit a very loose connection.

During the 1700s life on Bryher was almost unbearably harsh, island folk struggling to just feed themselves. The collection and burning of kelp for use in the manufacture of glass and soap was one of the ways in which islanders tried to make a living. Women dressed in heavy skirts would heap seaweed into carts pulled by donkeys. Then as years went by the seaweed were collected as we do for putting on farmers fields and gardens.

Today our job is much easier, we still collect much of it by hand, heaving the piles of seaweed that have been ripped from the seabed in the storms and stranded upon the beaches, but we also have the tractor to scoop some up and pull the trailer back to the fields.

The many different colours and textures create wonderful swirling patterns that would keep me occupied for hours if I had time to indulge in sifting through it all. Instead it’s headed for the rows of asparagus that once covered in their winter blanket of weed, look satisfyingly neat and tidy.

Afterwards Graham and I do indulge ourselves in a climb to the top of Samson Hill, from where you can enjoy a 360° view of all the islands, the wild Atlantic surging towards Bryher and the stretches of sandbanks in the channel, just submerged by the incoming tide. Although the sun is shining it holds little heat in the icy north westerly wind that brings blurring tears to the eyes.

There’s just enough time for Ruthie and I to squeeze a quick dip in before the children return from school. For a moment we feel the chilly wind upon our skin and then into the icy blue sea, the coldness slipping over our backs.

We swim out to a little blue buoy, far enough to forget the cold and instead enjoy the beautiful blues and greys of the water and the activity of a small shag swimming nearby. As we dry off and snuggle up in our towels afterwards the buzz of the swim brings wide smiles to our faces. We are living the island dream.

It’s taken me a while to put pen to paper after our trip to the mainland. Life has been busy, but I admit also to a small crisis in confidence, I’m sure everyone has felt it; when returning to work after a break, picking up a hobby that you’ve neglected for a while, taking that first step on a run after having some time off, you know the feeling.

I’ve had thoughts mulling around in my head, I’ve been swimming nearly everyday, but something has stopped me writing, I can always seem to find a more important job, and then I remembered a little phrase that was written on a bookmark I spotted, “the most effective way to do something is to do it”. Instead of procrastinating about writing, I must just start writing!

Next week I am attending my first ever writing retreat in the beautiful coastal hamlet of Lamorna in Cornwall. Some of my trepidation with writing, I think stems from my growing anticipation of being in a house surrounded by other writers, who, without knowing any of them I have convinced myself are all much more eloquent, interesting and creative than me. I don’t even know what I really want to write, I just know I like doing it.

Imagining myself sitting in the group, introducing myself and what I like about writing, has led me to think and try to say succinctly what it is that I write about. Parallel to these thoughts we also have a work away family staying with us for two months, they are keen to seek out new adventures, leave the rat race and find a way of life more suited to their dreams. I’ve been trying to explain why I love living on Bryher, why it causes such passionate feelings of contentment.

In essence it’s because it brings me closer to a very elemental life, one from which humans are evolved. Of our harsh but rewarding natural world, of simple pleasures such as crafting, music making or watching the fire light flickering on a dark night.

I love winter on Bryher, almost with an aching love. The solitary island, ravaged by almost constant wind, wild stormy seas and cold icy skies, has now a warmth and strength to its soul. I love the feeling that we could be cut off by storms but still have a community that would survive.

My attempts at winter crafting have begun in earnest with French knitting, Christmas decorations, painting and felting. I have time to play the piano and bake a little more and get together with friends, and I still make time for swimming of course.

My winter swims are more solitary, no boats in the water, no people mooching along the shoreline, even the seals have disappeared out onto the western rocks to have pups.

I still have company in the form of oyster catchers, eagrit, herron and the odd crab but mostly it’s just me and the cold sea.

Today the warmth and brightness of the sun as it shines through the kitchen window is a deception, for once outside the strength and coolness of the wind soon brings goosebumps to the skin and a nip to the nose.

Along Green Bay great heaps of deep, rotting seaweed, that will soon be destined for the asparagus crop, lay stranded at the tide line of days gone by. My feet sink into the cold, squishy kelp and cause me to slip and slide my way over the hidden granite pebbles.

A slight shower of rain is driven hard against my semi naked body by a gust of icy wind and mottled blue skin is drawn tought and pinched over flesh and bone.

The chill of the sea at first causes my forehead and bridge of my nose to ache with the cold and I work to keep my breath and movement steady and controlled. Before long though I am settled into the swim and the freedom and pleasure override the numbing cold.

So this is what I shall attempt to describe to the workaway family and my fellow “retreaters”, this indescribable feeling of being an islander; learning such great lessons in life from living on an isolated but wonderful rock in the middle of this beautiful ( but now quite chilly) ocean.

There are odd moments of time that unexpectedly move you, in places, at times, and ways that wouldn’t have occurred to you.

We had met in Scotland, a family gathered together for an 80th birthday, the middle brother of three, my uncle, and of course the remembrance that both of his brothers were no longer with us is what I would have expected to be emotional.

However, it was whilst looking at the whiskey collection in the pub, that spans nearly seventy years, I learnt that whiskey is fifteen years old when it is bottled. This meant that the 1952 whiskey was grown, harvested and processed before the second world war. I felt incredibly moved by this, here on a shelf sat a direct link to land, farmers and life before the horrors and struggles of war.

Men that harvested the barley would have used scythe, threshing machines, horses and physical strength to gather the grains for the distilleries that run the length of the River Spey. Some of these men may have gone to war and not returned, it was a sobering and moving thought.

My mind turns to the land, our connection over time to the land and the natural world around us. We are thoroughly connected to our environment, in our livelihood, our wellbeing our history and our future.

I’m reading a wonderful book by Nan Shepherd, written during the second world war, The Living Mountain. I chose it because it’s about the essential nature of the Cairngorms and her writing has a beautiful poetic prose, but she also shares with me a feeling of being part of or having a relationship with nature.

She writes; ” This is the river. Water, that strong white stuff, one of the four elemental mysteries, can here be seen at its origins. Like all profound mysteries, it is so simple that it frightens me. It wells from rock, and flows away. For unnumbered years it has welled from the rock, and flowed away. It does nothing, absoloutly nothing, but be itself. “

So it is with thoughts of both the men of whiskey, who’s past can still be reached through the amber liquid, and Nan Shepherds beautifully written account of being “in” the mountains, not on the mountains, that flow through my head as I walk up the muddy path that winds it’s way up through the woods, past the Aberlour Distillery to the Linn falls and my next quick dip into nature.

The walk gives me experiences that I can’t have on Bryher; tall wooded canopy, full of the colours of autumn, the smells of leaf mulch and the sweet malted barley, and the sound of the river as it rushes down the hill over the rocks towards the Spey.

This noise suddenly grows much louder, now a roar that deafens all senses to everything but the falls that now flow before me.

Being in the water is an easy way of feeling part of the nature around me, not just walking through it, and so I strip off my clothes with haste and scramble into the golden water over large boulders of slippery rock.

The freezing chill immediately pinches my toes and fingers but it feels wonderful, as cold silk would flow over skin.

The noise of the tumbling water feels intimidating as it thunders against my chest, the pool a dark abyss. Just being in this stunning setting, surrounded by nature is enough to refresh my world. After a brief but exhillerating dip I dry off, knocking mud and stuck leaves from my feet and follow the path back to the town.

I have left behind the turquoise waters of Scilly and travelled to just about the furthest point of the mainland you can get before setting sail once again, Inverness. A family birthday has bought a bunch of soft southerners up across the Scottish border to meet in a beautiful little town called Aberlour.

The town holds many seasonal delights for us to enjoy, rich, brown, silky conkers; a vast spectrum of autumnal hues all glittering and dancing in a crisp blue sky and a frosty air to nip the nose. Shops full of Scottish Salmon, whiskey and haggis, a pub where the air inside is snuggly warm and full of jovial frivolity and quietly meandering it’s way past all of this is the vast River Spey.

The Spey originates from the Scottish Highlands, flowing 107 miles through wooded valleys and heather moors to its mouth at Spey Bay on the Moray Firth.

Of course it’s far too good an opportunity to miss, a wild swim in an awesome river. A few inquiries locally for some safety advice on where to enter the River reveals new words such as spate and undercurrents, no tidal flow here. After a little recce up the River bank I find a spot where the fishermen stand that I can safely get into and out of the water. So a plan for an early morning dip is hatched.

8am

The river flows quickly towards the centre and far bank but relatively slowly on this side. I can get in, swim down and leave following the flow.

The dark, peaty amber liquid in the water echoes the amber liquid that famously fills glasses but I have a feeling it’s not going to warm the innards as the whiskey does.

My bare feet sink into leave mulch and cold mud as I scramble down the bank and onto the slippery rocks that lay on the riverbed. The water is icy cold and my skin flares with goosebumps as I creep lower into the river. For the first time in years the coldness of the water causes my breath to catch in my chest, if only for a short while, and a few whoops and shrieks escape into the frosty morning.

The river here is shallow and my knees bump along over the smooth rocks as I flounder my way downstream. Very quickly my hands a feet lose feeling but breathing becomes steadier and I can focus on the beauty around me. The colourful river bank, the width and stretch of the river, the rise of towering Ben Aigan on the horizon, my limbs illuminated amber in the water and the salmon leaping and splashing on the far side.

It is with quite a relief that after a distance of 132 metres I reach the dip in the bank that allows me to clamber out of the 3° degree water on numb stubby feet and attempt to move my limbs enough to dry off. I am as pink as the salmon that call the Spey home but despite the aching pain in my toes and fingers a buzz and thrill is beaming in my smile and twinkling in my eye.

A howling wind accompanied by heavy, sharp showers has been lashing the island all night and continues throughout the morning. Our small herd of Red Ruby cattle are currently grazing some of the heathland and cliff edges out around Droppy Nose Point and so we have the perfect excuse to walk out each morning to check them whilst taking in the stunning views and ever changing weather.

The western side of Bryher is standing steadfast against the relentless high tide as it crashes it’s way onto the rocks, clouds of white spray flying high into the grey skies. Graham and I draw our coats up around our ears and feel relieved to have made the decision to wear our waterproof trousers as the next shower pelts us with stinging horizontal rain.

As we walk around the point of Droppy Nose the wind shoves us along, the sea almost meets our feet and salty spray fills the air.

No swimming to the rocks of Merrick today, although part of me wishes to try. Sensibly though, I head around to Quay where the sea is much calmer and no one will worry about me.

Only a slight wave meets me as I plunge straight in off the quayside. Into a world of green and silver bubbles. For me it feels a tad safe, dare I say it boring, the water is cool but contented, no play in it today.

The light however is beautiful! As it is still early the sun is only just peeping above the monument over on Tresco, mostly covered by sporadic cloud the pale white light seeping out to reflect silver on the sea. However, as I swim back towards the shore, the sun now on my left, it emerges from behind the cloud cover to fill my world with glowing iridescent white light, a frosted, wintery sun. As I turn my head to breathe I need to close my eyes to avoid the fluorescent yellow snakes that burn themselves across my eyes.

Now the swim feels magical, now I feel that glow that early morning light combined with an early morning swim leaves you feeling.

The picture below was taken yesterday and although not the white light of today’s sun, I thought you might enjoy a golden glow instead.