Early morning traffic

Very early indeed - 6.24 a.m.  The Grand Princess cruise ship glides silently up the Firth of Forth on Saturday morning.  She will anchor off the Forth road and rail bridges, and passengers will transfer by tender for a day's shore excursion.  

I'm still not sure if watching this vast wedding cake of a ship moving up river was a bonus on our early morning walk by the shore.  We were heading home from Edinburgh airport, where we'd just deposited our son for the start of an inter-railing holiday in Europe (first leg obviously not by train!).  His route, we now realise, seems to have been planned to take in as many cities as possible that are currently being evacuated because of flooding...

But back to the Forth!  The structure that looks like a very long Toblerone bar is the tidal causeway linking Cramond Island with the mainland.  Despite living in Edinburgh for over 25 years, I have never visited Cramond Island.  It was heavily fortified in World War II - you can see a gun emplacement in the first picture.  

I'll leave it up to you whether you prefer the scene with cruise ship or without - tho there is a slightly more low key oil tanker in the last shot.

Over the past month I have hardly opened my laptop.  My daughter and I have been to Turin for a post-exam holiday, a hall of residence room has been cleared and contents shoe-horned into home, daughter has had university friends to stay en route to their homes abroad, son has been home briefly to pack and is even now looking for somewhere to eat in Geneva - not an easy task apparently on a Sunday night.  And it is the best time of year in Scotland - long, light evenings.  I still carry my camera with me wherever I go, and am stacking up photos, but there has always been something else to do which has got in the way of putting them on my blog.