So, this is home

I love this picture of Maggie and Jones on the beach at Hopeman, it is my favourite place to blow away the cobwebs, each fish and chips and watch dolphins. Yes, we have dolphins on the Moray Coast, they can be found at tide turn in the summertime as they make their way to Spey Bay to munch on fish. The sea around here is so alive with whales, dolphins, seals and of course people. I am never shocked to see people with their blue bodies take to the water at the first sign of sunshine, even at just 14 degrees the sea was full of people splashing about, shivering, but happy.  Hardy people these Northern Scots as the sea is usually freezing, though I am told Moray is warmed by the Gulf stream, it also has its own micro climate, due to its location. The map on the weather programme will show ice, snow, rain, yet there is usually a little gap where we live that manages to escape the worse of it.

It makes for a beautiful place, mountains and forests, woods and beaches, lochs and rivers and the sea. I love living in this place. Our nearest motorway is all the way South near Perth, very few factories, except for distilleries keep the air clean, the roads not too busy and pollution very low.

The lack of large towns and cities mean a lot of Black sky, this means star gazing is amazing, the Milky Way can be seen clearly, shooting stars abound and the joy of a Northern Lights sky is such awe inspiring. How can I not feel blessed to live here?  Don't get me wrong, I am a passionately patriotic Welsh woman, but my heart lives in this place.

This is Lossiemouth Beach, another of our lovely sandy places, in the summer this beach has visitors who come to stay in the local caravan park, locals, and people out for the day, and me and Mr T flock to it to eat ice cream cones sat waiting for the dolphins to arrive.  There are Osprey's in the estuary the other side of the sand dunes, they come in like Apache helicopters making the gulls, oystercatchers and sandpipers take off in a raucous chattering, only the heron fronts it out. The Osprey swoop into the river catching fish to the delight of the onlookers.  We sit here with our fish and chips on a Friday night enjoying the free show.  Forget Sea World and the like, this is seeing nature at its very best.

The noise of the Typhoon jets as they do circuits of take off and land from nearby RAF Lossiemouth adds to the spectacle. Such a small town, so many wonderful things to see and not a funfair in sight. Who needs a merry go round when nature provides all you need to enjoy yourself.

This is where we live and now call home and we love it.  We first lived here in the early 1990's when Mr T was at RAF Lossiemouth and we loved it, it felt like home from the start. When he left the RAF we knew we wanted to move back and live here forever and so began our new life.