Wednesday 9th June 2021

Back in the jugg agane.

Chiz, chiz.

Yes, day two of the audit, so another day in paradise.

I am awake before five, wondering what the time is, could be half three. I check the phone.

So, I get up, have a shower and mess around online, filling in the time until half six when I can go to breakfast, fill up on bacon butty, then head to work.

I drove along the coast, not needing the sat nav as the towers of our turbines can be seen five miles away, hat and the road leading along he coast goes right by the yard. I stop off in Seaton Carew to find a place to buy supplies for lunch. I get a pasty, crisps, and a chicken sandwich. And grapes.

Onto the port, I check in, have my temparature taken and am allowed in, I do a drive by shooting of the oil rig modules as they look amazing in the morning light.

And then onto the yard with the climb up for sets of steps to the office floor, I sign in and get my breath back. There is just enough time for that before the audit starts. Through the day I graze the gapes and other stuff, so that by half twelve there are just a half bunch of the grapes left.

THe day went well, and we were done by five, and as soon as the closing meeting finished I was out of the door and down to the car, having decided to go to one of my favourite orchid sites.

Teeside is a land of contrats: fine coastline and then a post-industrial dystopian hell in the towns and villages, all rusting steelworks and other such relics of our heavy industrial past. They voted Brexit here, as the great forgotten, liars having told them things would change, they will, but not for the better. Hard people eek out hard lives, those who worked in the extinct mills now walk the litter-strwn streets, or in the countryside, which still is magnificent.

My route to Bishop Middleham takes me past yet more closed factories and mills, along dual carriageways now leading to just towns, not industrial areas. Road leap over what used to be railway lines, but are now tracks, all is gone.

As I near Sedgefield, clouds roll in, and the early evening light is lost, so that it is a downright gloomy when I get there. I walk down the steps from the road, no Northern Argus butterflies to be seen, too cool now, but as I scour the grass for signs of the rare Moonwort, I see something purple in the grass on the floor of the old quarry: a Northern Marsh Orchid!

I take my time, as it is easily seen, but as I approach, even in the poor light, the colour screams out.

I take many shots, good job as 75% of them are too blurry.

In a ledge, three girls are having a chat round a campfire, the eye me with suspicion, me with a camera, big lens and ring flash. But I look at the ground, snap orchids and orchid rosettes, scouring the sides of the quarry, until I see one different, with spotted leaves: a hybrid between an NMO and a Common Spotted. I snap that over and over again.

And that is it, really, the light was gone, I had shots, not that good, but some OK. I could return on Thursday of the light is better?

I drive back to Hartlepool, stopping to get more snacks for supper: doritos, a bottle of Coke and another pasty. All the food groups.

Then into the town, along wide streets which carve their way through big box stores onw what were once factories.

I park up and go to my room. Call Jools and eat all the food.

Job done.

Time for bed, and I thik that one more day up here, and go home Friday.

Lovely.