Moody skyscape beyond Whitesands beach in East Lothian.

Whitesands to Barns Ness, 5 April

This post has been sitting in drafts - minus words, as I’d uploaded the photos - for a few weeks now, but somehow I’ve fallen out of the routine (or discipline) of spending time here. I didn’t intend this, but I think it’s a combination of having evening walks back, as evenings had become my time to write over winter, and also those evening walks resulting in a lot more photos and videos to edit and share on Instagram. My iPhone screen time has jumped up over the last few weeks as I’ve been editing photos and creating more reels (on which, I’m really enjoying the new Edits app, so have been diving into those reels), and that’s all taken me away from here.

But this has also left me with a busier mind. Don’t get me wrong, Instagram is my favourite space to create content, and that’s because of the years of memories held on TWATH, and because of the friendships that have evolved there. But those snippets of life and short form content, whether I’m creating or viewing other people’s posts and stories and reels, also speeds up my headspace, and this blog, this quiet place, is a way of resetting that. Writing helps to slow my brain down a little. It helps me think more clearly in general.

So let’s rewind to this gloomy-skied walk at Barns Ness and on towards Torness. The remarkable thing when I look at this, revisiting these photos from April 5th, is how these weeks have passed. I remember standing above the shore and appreciating the visual impact of the vibrant golden gorse within this grey and green and brown-toned coastal palette. That coconut-y gorse held the promise of those warmer and brighter days ahead. Walking here again on Saturday, this gorse has faded back, the brilliance of its colour now muted, flowers shrivelled against their stalks, as we’ve travelled through spring and find ourselves in the early days of summer.

How did this time pass so quickly? A lot of things have been bubbling away in the background in recent weeks and they’ve reminded us of how we started this year hoping for some positive changes and yet, as we’re just days away from June - June, with its equinox and that turning point in the year - we haven’t moved forwards. And there are good reasons for this, as there are always things to take up your days and weeks and steal your energy, but time keeps passing and we can’t simply… keep standing still.

So I’ll leave you with these gentle tones of a chilly walk in early April, and promise I’ll be back here (very) soon with another post.