Waving April goodbye

Today’s guest picture comes from my sister Mary. In the course of walking 18,000 steps today, she stopped long enough to take this lovely picture of the Isabella plantation in Richmond Park.

April ended here on a warmer note than it had begun, and we were back to dry weather again. A brisk wind made sure that we didn’t discard too many clothes just yet though.

I had a full day. starting with a look round the garden . . .

. . . followed by a three bridges walk on the way to do a little shopping in the High Street. The sun came out as I went along. I stopped on the Jubilee Bridge when I saw a tree creeper on the tree and a blue tit going into the nest hole. I might have seen either or both again, if the many dog walkers passing by hadn’t kept on asking me in loud voices what I was looking at. I had more success with Mr Grumpy and a mallard.

The hundreds of male flowers on the noble fir on the Castleholm have been joined by the first sightings of the cones.

We had coffee when I got back, and I kept an eye out for birds. A siskin and a goldfinch had a continuing dispute on the feeder, which if you go round the panel below clockwise from top left, you will see was finally won by the goldfinch.

The lawn was being pecked by jackdaws. A jackdaw posed for me and a rook lurked.

I collected a lot of the pecked moss off the lawns, and did some shredding of material collected by Mrs Tootlepedal from the back border.

After lunch, I went off for a pedal. As the wind was blowing, and I wanted a hilly ride, I took my electric bike over the moor to Newcastleton, and then up the road to Hermitage and across to the A7 at Fiddleton.

The camera club theme this month is bridges, so I noted a few as I went round.

Instead of going straight up the road from Newcastleton to Hermitage, I took the Jedburgh road for a mile or so, passing the Castleton cemetery . . .

. . . and then cutting back to Hermitage by way of the road through Steele Road. This is a lovely little road with good views, fine trees, a disused railway bridge, and with such an excellent surface in places that I wondered if a councillor lives somewhere along it.

I usually do this ride in the opposite direction, so it was a treat to get a fresh look as I went past the castle, up the Hermitage Water valley and over the hill today.

That last picture of the road along Carewoodrigg was taken with my phone. It has a more dramatic vision of the countryside than my pocket camera.

As the wind had been coming from the south east, I thought that I might have a battle to get down the main road back to Langholm, but the wind must have shifted round a bit, and the trip home was pretty painless.

When I got home, I found that Attila the Gardener had been busy.

The yew tree by the pond is undergoing another transformation. It started as a chessman, turned into a pyramid, and having been short and stout lately, it is now going to be tall and thin.

In spite of a wet and windy start, April has been a good month for walking and cycling. I have used my road bike a little more this month than my electric bike which is satisfying. In total I have walked and pedalled more or less exactly 500 miles, a nice round number.

The flying bird of the day is a rather fuzzy rook. It had something very large in its beak and I can’t make out if it was food or nesting material.

I append a clickable map of today’s ride.