Christmas at Cramond Island

Well, I spent all Christmas week up in Edinburgh with my friends Thibault and Clarissa. But Christmas day morning Thibault came up with the idea of doing a walk out to Cramond Island, which was a short drive from their home, before tucking into Christnmas lunch. 

Now the thing with Cramond Island is that you can only reach it along a concrete causeway at low tide. Fortunately we had Thibault to check and double-check the tide timetables. You don't want to be stuck on an uninhabited island on Christmas Day! It is actually a pretty easy walk, and we were not the only ones to have the idea - the car park was full by the time we got there.

The causeway is lined with concrete "teeth" inserted in world war two in case the enemy decided to pop over by boat

The other nice thing (for me) is that there are extensive mudflats which attract birds. So redshanks below I think 

I believe this is a curlew

A much more readily identifiable grey heron

An Oystercatcher

When you get to the island itself it is fair to say there is not a lot to see. Some WW2 bunkers and some trees

And views across to the mainland

But the views do include the Firth of Forth bridges

And an egret

 We also met a Nepali couple (as you would expect on an uninhabited island in Scotland!) who kindly took some photos of our merry little crew😀