Eyebroughy, 15 August

We’re at the end of week four of crate rest here and I’m now looking ahead to the possibility of getting back outside. Okay, reality check: it’ll be a wee while before we can get Raf back to hour-long walks, far less our longer walks, but we ordered a dachshund-specific bag in the hope, the hope, that Raf will tolerate being carried (this feels unlikely but… let’s see) so that we can actually get back to walking. The bag looks great as it’s lightweight and fully supportive of that long hound spine thanks to its rigid aluminium base, but the jury is firmly out on our ability to train/coax Raf – normally a compact whirlwind of activity – into accepting an ‘elevated walk’ when he clearly feels that he’s 100% ready to run.

I guess we’ll find out the answer to this soon enough – this week, hopefully, when I can start training Raf to enjoy/accept/tolerate hanging out in a horizontal backpack.

This walk takes us back to the middle of August, when we headed to Yellowcraig on a Saturday evening to find this beautiful skyscape over the Forth, and too many campers to make a beach walk feasible. So we headed west, towards Eyebroughy, hoping to find some calmer spots and an empty beach for Raf and Oak to explore. I was mesmerised by the way the light was shifting – subtle shifts, but so beautiful. As always on this walk, I took many, many photos of Fidra.

When sharing photos or videos from this route, it often feels like a jump between the views of Fidra from just beyond Yellowcraig and the view below, from Eyebroughy. You can see that time has passed, that the early evening light has shifted to dusk, with a moody sky. Almost too dark for photos, but I love this light.

While the in-between route is also scenic, I rarely get the chance to pause for photos as I’m usually walking with Raf on-lead. The path is narrow and winding, leading along the edge of the rock face at points before briefly dipping down into a wooded area that brings you to a fork in the path. The route ahead takes you down the wooden walkway to Eyebroughy’s rocky shore at low tide, while the path to the left is the better high tide option, leading along the edge of the golf course (Fidra Links at Archerfield Golf Club) before winding down to the stone cairn and the shore beyond.

As usual on this walk, we paused at the cairn, simply enjoying the quietness for a bit, before heading back along the pebbly and rocky shore.