Out and around

Today’s picture is another from my sister Mary’s recent walk and shows London looking very compact when viewed from  Parliament Hill.

It was dry and breezy when I woke so I got up into my cycling gear and quite soon after breakfast managed to organise enough energy to get the speedy bike out and pedal the 21 miles to Paddockhole and back.  The wind wasn’t as strong as yesterday but strong enough to make coming back at 16 mph a very easy task.  There were no scones with coffee as Dropscone was on his way to France.

After a shower, I went up to the post office to collect an important message from Scottish Power.  The gist of the message was that they are nearly doubling the daily standing charge for the electricity connection we use at the Archive Centre thus penalising small power users like ourselves and no doubt using the money to try to tempt others to transfer to their company with exciting but short term offers.  You might wonder why they don’t treat loyal customers better to encourage them to stay with the company but of course they know that most of us are too idle, too busy or too confused to swap providers every year.   It is depressing that we now routinely imagine that big companies are doing their level best to take advantage of their customers and even more depressing to find that this is often true.

I photographed a bird to cheer myself up….

A chaffinch looking a bit portly in the plum tree.

…and then I photographed two birds to cheer myself up even more.

A chaffinch and brambling putting their heads together to try to solve the world’s problems.

It was a very pleasant late morning in spite of the nippy wind so Mrs Tootlepedal ventured out to do some work tidying up one of the borders in the garden and I got out a fork and finished spiking and sanding the middle lawn.  After that, I was more than ready for a late lunch.  We thought we might go out for a walk in the afternoon but soon after lunch it started to rain so we changed our plan and decided to go down to Canonbie in the car and walk there instead if the weather was better.

In fact the weather was even more rainy in Canonbie than it had been in Langholm so we pressed on towards Gretna where a patch of blue sky promised better conditions.  We went through the village and down to Browhouses but it started to rain there too.  This was a pity as the tide was right in…

…and the weather to the west looked as though it might fair up so that we could get a walk along the shore…

…but if anything, it started to rain harder so we gave up and drove inland.  The sky to the west was glorious and even with two cameras I couldn’t do it justice….but I stopped the car several times and tried.

To the south as we drove along, all was gloom.

But to the north the sun picked out the Carlesgill windmills, whirring round under the grey sky above.

We came back through Glenzier and shortly before we reached the village, I stopped to admire the beginnings of a sunset.

With the obligatory power pole of course.

In the end, although we didn’t get our walk either along the river at Canonbie or along the Solway shore, we enjoyed our outing just for the cloudscapes.  We saw a few flocks of starlings hurrying towards Gretna as we went along but we were too early to see the great gathering.  We intend to go back to see that spectacle soon.

The clouds pursued us back to Langholm and this threatening little number loomed over the car as Mrs Tootlepedal did some shopping for her tea.

In the evening, Mike and Alison came round and Alison and I played some new music which we are adding to our repertoire.  When I say new music, I mean of course some quite old music but new to us.

After yesterday’s walk, today’s cycle and lawn spiking and the effort of concentrating while sight reading, I shall sleep well tonight.