Graeme writes to the Gurn

Hello Gurn,

As a frequent visitor to your blog, and regular visitor to Nairn I thought I'd try to make a contribution by emailing you some photographs that I took over this past weekend. Playing around with my camera, I had a lovely walk along the pier and snapped the harbour in all its glory on my way back. I headed along to the bandstand to get a wee pic of it but my tripod wasn't playing ball so this was my best attempt. The swimmer that can just about be made out, jumped in from the pier on Sunday morning and swam towards the Nairn Golf Club then back. Freezing water, cold day, strong winds !! Top marks to the guy. Heard it mentioned that he was in training to swim the 12 miles across the firth.
A couple of snaps are from Cawdor's Living Food event which seemed to pull in good numbers despite inclement weather. Over 50 stalls selling a variety of fantastic local produce from venison to shellfish, chocolate to whisky, jam to organic burgers. We had a great day out and the kids even enjoyed dancing in the rain !
A walk along the river showed how green most of the trees still are. Is autumn retreating a bit this year ? The banks were absolutely covered in this plant ( some kind of balsam ? ) which seems to have overtaken at points. My daughter enjoyed popping the seed pods on our way round.
Anyway, feel free to use any or none of my snaps and keep up the good work, I really enjoy your blog, it keeps me up to date with all the local news and gossip.

Regards,
Graeme

Thanks Graeme, good work, that's the kind of input we're very happy to receive at the Gurn. Gurnites can see a full-scale slide show here. Graeme obviously encountered the Himalayan Balsam around the river, now going to seed. Still the Highland Council have done nothing and the seed from this year's bumper crop will probably completely overwhelm the native species next year if nothing is done. It is a very beautiful plant yes, but we could do with a lot less of it if the native habitat is to remain a native habitat.