Naughty old Blogger had eaten Katherine's last post about stream dipping in the river. Bah. We've retrieved the first bit from the Facebook feed:

The River Aln is just a 15 minute walk from our house.  This morning Fred, Tony, Lovejoy and I all wandered down armed with a net and an old yellowing plastic tub which had been left by the previous and now deceased owner of our house.  After not very long at all we had caught se...

and went on: ...veral leeches, two caddis fly larvae, two stone fly larvae, one tiny mayfly larva and some unidentified squiggly things. Nobody could catch the fish (sticklebacks?) that we could see. I love living here!

Today Katherine, Fred and Lovejoy picked me up from the station after an overnight trip to Bath and we went to the beach at Longhoughton. You have to go on to a private road (and put 50p in an honesty box at the farm gate), between green fields where two yellowhammers were zooming about, one on each side of the car. We chucked tennis balls for the dog and clambered over the rocks, me in my work trousers and Fred fearlessly forging ahead. The beach was deserted apart from one other mother, toddler and labrador and then on the other side another couple of collies and owner. We found a dead crab which is now sitting on the outside sill of Fred's bedroom window, and then smelt and eventually saw a massive seal's corpse. It was so rotten and gross that even Lovejoy (who had just chomped down a dead fish he found on the rocks) wasn't tempted. It reminded us of the first time we came to Northumberland years ago and we went on a tour of the Farne Islands - Katherine found a seal's paw and picked it up, waving it for the camera. The man on the boat thought we were weird!