Relaxing day at Hardings Beach and then Oyster Pond

Today was about not doing much. We had a good breakfast in the house and got ourselves ready for a short 5 minute drive to Hardings Beach. This was rated by the tourist office as one of the best. Really nice sandy beach that stretched for miles. It seemed pretty popular but was so big it didn’t get remotely crowded. The boys all went in the sea pretty quickly and Helen went for a long walk long the shore – I did security. Although it seemed cloudy, the sun in reality was out, and boys & I all caught the sun. Helen was furious with herself.

We were ready for a late lunch about 2pm and went to the Corner Store famed for its burritos. They’d been recommended by the Finnies and also in guidebooks and justifiably so – delicious. The staff were convinced Tom was Harry Potter due to his accent – I mean who else could he have been. They were very amused Harry was indeed Harry. The burritos were fully loaded and no need to for any sides or desserts – we took them home to eat.

Afterwards, we headed off for Chatham Harbour to watch the seals which follow the fishing boats back in late afternoon. The harbour jetty was packed with tourists doing the same and there were half a dozen or so milling around looking for fish scraps. We watched some fishing crew drag the remains of skate (they’d taken off the wings to sell) and populate them into dozens of lobster cages as bait.

On the way home we found Oyster Pond where Helen & I did nothing and boys improvised a new game of catch based around the terminology of baseball where the objective was to throw the ball ‘out of the park’ without throwing a ‘ball’ or making an ‘error’. They were pretty loud though prompting lots of shushing from the shore.

I cooked scallops with pasta in the house using just caught Atlantic scallops from a visit to Stop ‘n’ Shop on the way home. So fresh, massive, pure white and totally delicious. Its nigh on impossible to buy such good ones back home and they cost about a quarter of the price of what we can buy.