I continue to exist while waiting for the crofting situation with the plot to be sorted out.

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This morning Karen Munro tweeted:

2 large whales spotted blowing in Sinclairs Bay, near Wick today, I am stuck at work car-less. Really hoping someone gets an ID on them

By the time I read that, about an hour later, it was a bit of a long shot but, still, I needed to get out for a while so I went up to Castle Sinclair Girnigoe which is on the north coast of the little peninsular sticking out from Wick past its airport forming the southern boundary of Sinclairs Bay, at the end of the footpath shown here on OpenStreetMap. (Memo to self, go back and map the car park and castle.)

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My previous Decrofting post summarises the situation with the purchase of the plot as it was at the beginning of November. Since then not a lot has happened but just about enough to be worth reporting.

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At the end of my So Far... post I was wondering what to do about the pair of plots I had my eye on. After a bit of contemplation I put in an offer on it but there's a bit of a problem.

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For anybody who hasn't corresponded with me recently it must be a bit of a puzzle what's going on with my house build project. Or, to put it a bit more succinctly, WTF have I been up to? I'll start from the beginning...

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The deer here are getting just a bit too bold. A bunch of them were in the field diagonally across from the house this evening after dinner so I decided to see what I could do to both photograph them and scare them off a bit.

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This morning Venus transited the Sun. From here in Tongue only the last hour and a bit could possibly have been visible starting at sunrise at around 03:20Z (04:20 BST).

Frankly, the chances were fairly slim that the weather would co-operate but, given the excellent skies we had for the 2003 Transit of Mercury and 2004 Transit of Venus it seemed churlish not to at least give it a try.

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It's been over two years now since I last used my telescope. With the transit of Venus coming up on Wednesday morning I thought I'd give it a quick try.

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Living around Tongue the view is usually at least interesting - even if it's only for the lack of a view in rain and mist. Sometimes, though, it's almost possible to understand why people come this way on holiday.

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Not surprisingly my solar warm air panel isn't doing a lot now it's December so perhaps an update would be good.

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