Sunday, 12th October

Waking up without an alarm is one of the best things!  Today was Mathew's Birthday. After breakfast, we sat down and Mathew opened his presents - DVDs, gift cards, books, a t-shirt, jellybeans and fudge.

We decided to do a walk today, on the south end of the island.  We made our way south to Castletown and headed west right to the point.  We parked literally just in front of the Calf of Man which is a nature reserve.  We even saw some seals in the water before setting off for our walk. Our route took us north up to Port Erin, where we turned inland and headed south towards Cregneash.  The path was not too muddy, gravelly and stony, good enough to get a good grip.

The view was fantastic - we could see seals on the rocks below, plenty of cormorants flying above, and the rocks were pretty dramatic, looming over us in some areas, forming small 'smugglers coves' in others.  The only downside was the gorse - generally it was fine but there were a few places where it got pretty close and prickly and in one place shoulder height (for me at least), but not for too long, thankfully!

We stopped off in Port Erin and had our lunch on the beach.  It was really hot in the sun but really rather cold in the shade so there was no happy medium!  Port Erin seemed like quite a nice little town, again with clean, white or cream Victorian buildings and terraces on the seafront.

Setting off again, we headed to Cregneash and we stopped off at a small stone circle on the way, known as 'Mull Stone Circle' - and it was actually a circular formation of six cist burials, not your average stone circle!  This was certainly not something we have seen before!  We continued on to the top of the hill where we passed through the remains of a WW2 radar station before going down the other side of the hill to stop off at Cregneash Folk Museum.  This was a tiny 'village' made of houses which would have been used years ago, such as a smithy, a joiners, a church, a small farm, and several cottages belonging to notable people.  We had a little listen to the original Manx language which has a very Gaelic sort of sound, and I haven't been able to pin down a sort of accent when people speak English - there seems to be lots of things like Liverpudlian, Cornish, Welsh, Irish, Scottish....perhaps we haven't heard many people speaking just yet though, we have only been here for 1 day!

After Cregneash we continued on with the walk on the southern part of the coast which is known as Spanish Head.  Before we went along this though, we went down a hill at the end of which there was a building with the word 'Chasms' on it.  In the field, there was a signpost saying "The Chasms and Spanish Head".  When we got to the building we weren't quite sure what it used to be, possibly a cafeteria or something similar.  There were still seats in a sheltered area around the back of the building, but in front on the coast there was a fenced off area which was known as "The Chasms".  A fairly dangerous area really, basically full of what can only be described as large crevasses in the rocks going all the way down to the water below, all very long and very deep. Some quite narrow so you could hop across them, others too wide to consider crossing - and all covered in grass, gorse and heather.  There were a few safe paths which had been created so people could make their way to the cliff edge but I didn't want to get too close to the edge and I didn't like Mathew getting too close either!!  The best I can describe the rocks at this point, is that they were very similar to the limestone pavements of the 'Burren' on the west coast of Ireland, but without all the flowers and on a smaller scale.

Making our way out of the 'danger zone', we continued on to the Spanish Head and made our way back round in a loop to the car park where we began our walk.  I have to admit that the first part of the walk was more spectacular, but this circular walk we thought was a very nice walk indeed.  On the Spanish Head, there was a lot of low gorse and heather mixed in with each other, and quite a bit of bracken too.  The path offers sea and cliff views, but they're not quite as dramatic as what we saw this morning.  Very picturesque though.

Finally back at the car, we hopped in and made our way back to the cottage.  That evening, I watched the Strictly results show and Mathew made a delicious roast dinner for us both including fabulous roast potatoes!  We then devoured a slice of raspberry and white chocolate cheesecake which we had brought with us especially.  Happy Birthday Mathew!

We ended the evening by first going outside to admire the stars without the lights on in the cottage - so dark we could actually see the Milky Way properly!  We tried taking photos and failed, although my battery decided to die on me so I had to put it on charge for a while before trying again and failing miserably.  So we gave up had a cup of tea and watched a DVD instead!