The sunshine seems to have taken a temporary leave of absence this morning – so to brighten things up, a few snaps of summery Dock life over the last few days…

This is the life, eh!  Staff meetings in the sunshine… extracting the deckchairs from their winter hibernation… cool customers and cute doggies chilling out in the sunshine… cyclists arriving over the new Sam Thompson bridge…

And last Sunday, our sun-baked Dock Walk took us right underneath Samson and Goliath to check out the new feature on the Belfast skyline, the oil rig in the Musgrave Channel.  When we were there, some massive lengths of photogenically-rusted chain had just been laid out along the length of the channel.  I’m sure they have some prosaic practical purpose, but what a cool photo op!

(And a great discussion starter for the Dock Walkers – we talked and prayed about the chains that can sometimes weigh us down, and the links that bind us together.  What a great picture of the interconnected world of The Dock – all our different traditions, linked and mingled, without visible beginning or end.)

And the TQ even looks cool when the sun starts to disappear – on our Dock Walk the previous Sunday we passed Titanic Belfast gleaming in blazing sunshine, but with gloriously ominous storm cloud gathering in the distance…

And of course if you call into The Dock for an early evening cuppa during our new extended opening hours (until 7pm every weekday), you can watch the sun start to sink behind the Belfast hills… Dock sunsets are the best!