Almost too busy to blog

My brother Andrew passed on this guest picture of the day from his son Nick.  The River Soar has burst its banks and Nick’s garden near Nottingham was in this state when he woke up this morning.

We had another grey but dry day here today but the forecast is offering us a lot more rain to come.  I couldn’t take advantage of the weather to get out for a walk as I had a visit from a man looking for photographs in the morning.

We had a good look through eight years of pictures, courtesy of the excellent media search system on WordPress and selected ten possibilities.  That took time but was relatively easy.   Then I had to try to find the originals as the pictures I use on the blog are too small to be useful elsewhere,  This took a lot of time but I did find not only an old external hard drive but the connecting lead too so I was able to get originals of most of the selection.

This didn’t leave me a lot of time to look at birds, although my visitor kindly pointed out this resting blackbird as he passed by the window.

It was a day of few birds but there were enough chaffinches about to annoy one of our resident dunnocks.

One chaffinch is enough to annoy a dunncok.

Some birds did turn up in the end…

…but this one preferred to remain anonymous…

…and reflections in the window spoiled this one’s efforts to become FBotD.

I walked round the garden but it has got colder again and crocuses, whether singly…

…or in clumps, were sulking.

After lunch, we went off to Carlisle to collect our daughter Annie and her daughter Evie from the London train.

They had survived the journey very well and Annie was full of praise for the station staff at Euston who had gone out of their way to get her on to the train with her pushchair before the other passengers boarded and had found her a suitable seat.

The only drawback to the Zoe is that the battery takes up a lot of room and as a result our boot is very small.  We just managed to squeeze Evie, Annie, the pushchair and a big case in and drove back to Langholm safely.

Evie has settled down well and is sleeping quietly as I write this.  She was undisturbed by a gang of recorder players who came in the evening and played music in the front room.

I am quite tired at the moment and will try to write more fully tomorrow.

The flying bird of the day is another chaffinch who avoided the worst of the reflections in the window.

Clubbed

Today’s guest picture comes from our son Tony.  He saw what looks like the narrowest tall building in the world on a visit to London.  He revealed that the secret of its narrowness is that it is triangular.  He found a good angle to take his picture.

It was dry but still very windy here today and I nearly got blown off my bicycle on my way to the shop to buy some milk.  In a sign of the time, the shopkeeper told me that he is looking into the possibility of going back to glass milk bottles to cut down on plastic use.

When I got home, I had time to watch the birds battling the wind too.  At times the feeder was very rocky…

…and the birds got buffeted by the breeze as they tried to land.

I was a second too slow with my shutter finger  to catch a flying bird of the day as this one applied the brakes on landing.

Mrs Tootlepedal was busy preparing for the arrival of our  younger granddaughter tomorrow but she also went off to deliver the second curtain to the Archive Centre  so I had time to go round the garden.

A little sunshine cheered things up.

I made some vegetable soup for lunch and then, ignoring the forecast possibility of rain, I went for a walk.

When I got to the park, I could see the tidemark left by Saturday night’s flood.

Things have dried up well, helped by the strong winds, but there are still some good puddles in the fields, and plenty of water coming through the pipe at the old distillery and joining the rush down the river.

There was a good amount of water coming down the Esk but Skippers Bridge only needed one of its three arches to cope with the flow.

As I walked down the road beside the river, I reflected on the size of the chap who must have sat and rested on this fence.

I left the road and walked up the track across the old railway.  The path through the oak wood was as enjoyable as ever….

…but the path back to town through the birch wood was a bit tacky…

…though not as bad as I expected.

I passed several varied little streams in gullies as I went along, but only one was a stream of moss.

I approached the Round House and took advantage of the bench…

…to rest my legs for a moment and enjoy the view over the town.

It wasn’t cold but there are still a few patches of snow to be seen on our hills…

…but to counterbalance that, there are signs of spring about too.

I was able to look down on Skippers Bridge from the path home, thanks to the power line which has meant that trees have had to be cut back.

Near the end of the  track, I had to duck.

When I got to the town, I called in at the newspaper office which is home to the Archive Centre.  Here I was able to admire the second new curtain installed earlier in the day by Mrs Tootlepedal.

The data miners are now curtained off like a Turkish Seraglio and can safely practice their arcane rituals unobserved….and more importantly, without inconvenient draughts.

I walked on to the Town Bridge and was able to spot an oyster catcher having a good stretch.

The water in the rivers has turned from an angry brown to a sullen grey, with the Ewes on the right, being greyer than the Esk.

I have been asked by a couple of people if I can provide them with some cheerful pictures of local areas and this meant that I had to sit down and do battle with my picture filing system.  My method for filing involves the well tested “I’ll worry about that later” principle.”

This however was now that ‘later’ moment, but I surprised myself a great deal by being able to locate the memory cards on which photos from, 2012 to 2016 were stored. I was even able to pin down a particular picture from 2014.  Mrs Tootlepedal was very impressed.  I was quite impressed myself.

Then my flute playing friend Luke arrived and we had another go through our Quantz sonata with some satisfactory progress being made.  We have both resolved to try to practise a bit more if time permits.

After tea, I went of to the monthly meeting of the Camera Club.  Sadly Sandy was unable to be with us as he is still in hospital after his operation but seven members gathered and we had a varied and very enjoyable selection of photographs to look at, with pictures from all over Britain and the world beyond as well as many local studies.  There was tea and biscuits at half time as well,  so this was a very satisfying meeting.

The flying bird of the day is a rather morose looking chaffinch.

Blown away

Today’s guest picture comes from my brother Andrew. It shows all the cakes that he and my sister Susan didn’t eat when they visited a garden centre cafe. They are both models of restraint.

I was woken in the middle of the night by a tremendous rattling on the windows, and thinking it was another rainstorm, went back to sleep expecting to see high water in the morning again.

In fact, the noise was made by a brief hailstorm and little rain fell overnight.  As a result there had been a marked alteration in the state of the River Esk by the time we went to church at ten o’clock.

This was quite surprising but very welcome.

It was still windy and although it was dry, we were pleased to have our coats on when we walked home after the service.

I stooped to look at the first hellebore of the season…

…before going in for a coffee.

The picture is a bit of a cheat as I had to hold the head of the flower up to get the shot.

After coffee, I spent a moment looking at the birds.  In a contrast to the usual state of affairs, it was hard to take picture today that didn’t have a flying bird in it.

I finally managed to get a flying bird free shot, but as you can see from the nervous look on the face of the goldfinch..

…it didn’t take long for another flier to appear.

I persuaded Mrs Tootlepedal that it would be a good idea to go for a walk  The wind was still very brisk so we chose a spot which we thought would be sheltered and drove over the hill to the road along the Tarras Valley.  There is a handy car park there beside the river…

…and the road is quiet and perfect for a walk.

We headed up the valley with the strong wind behind us.  It wasn’t quite as sheltered as we had hoped.

The Tarras Water trips over many little cascades as it heads down to join  the Esk and even on a chilly winter’s day, this is a delight to cascade lovers like myself.

I tore myself away from the waterside and we walked on until we came to the flatter section of the valley where Arkleton Cottage Stands beside some elegant bends in the river and road.

On the hillside beside the cottage, there are walls within walls.

As we walked along, Mrs Tootlepedal kept an eye out for interesting raptors and any sign of other wild life.

She didn’t see any raptors, but she did spot some interesting looking boulders.  When the boulders started to move around, we could see that they were in fact some of the the wild goats which roam these hillsides.

Often they looked like indeterminate lumps among the long grass but when one lifted its head, we could see what they were.  It was extremely difficult to take pictures of them because they were quite far away and the wind was so strong that it was hard to stand up straight.  The Lumix did what it could.

As you can see from the goat pictures, the weather was changeable and we did have the occasional glimpse of sun but by the time that we got to the cottage, which can be approached by a ford…

..or a footbridge…

….it had started to rain, so we thought it wise to head back to the car.

We were delayed for a moment by some excellent lichen on a boulder…

..or two…

…and talking to a passing cyclist with three dogs who was heading back down the road into the teeth of the very strong wind.  He was very relaxed and this turned out to be because he was on a very serviceable electric mountain bike with fat tyres and low gears.  This was enabling him to face the wind with equanimity.

He pedalled off into the distance and we followed after him, very much slower and battling into a fierce wind which made walking difficult.  The sleety rain in our faces did not help.

All the same we were able to spot another small group of goats.  I rested my camera on a roadside salt container and was just about to take a good shot when the dratted beast stuck its head down behind a tussock and started munching.

I had to make do with another cascade further down stream…

…and then we followed the river back to the car.

Although we had walked less than two miles, it had felt quite adventurous thanks to the battle against the elements and we drove home very satisfied with our little outing.

The sun came out when we got back and the birds settled down too.

Mike and Alison very kindly brought round a cot for the use of our granddaughter Eve, who is coming to visit next week (with her mother) and then we drove off to Carlisle for a choir practice.

We were somewhat nervous about what we might find from flood and storm damage on the way, but the sun came out, the road was dry, and there was no debris at all.  A stranger might have found it very hard to believe that a storm had passed over us at all let alone that there were flood warnings out all over the rest of the country.  Once again, we have been very lucky.

The choir practice had enjoyable moments but in one piece the tenors, who were lacking a few of their competent singers today, found themselves rather exposed by some tricky harmonies.  The need for some serious home work is indicated.  All the same, in our defence, I would like to say that it is very hard to come in on a G when everyone else is singing an A and there is no help from the piano accompaniment. At least, I think it is.

I had put beef stew in the slow cooker in the morning and Mrs Tootlepedal cooked some vegetables to go with it when we came home.  I counted seven vegetables in the meal in total so it was probably quite healthy as well as being tasty.

The flying bird of the day is a chaffinch.

A dull day

Today’s guest picture is another from camera club member Simon’s recent walk in our hills.  It was so grey today that I thought we needed at least one bit of sunshine to brighten up the day.

Storm Dennis arrived softly but it was raining by coffee time and the wind got up as the day went on.  Luckily we seemed to have been spared the worst once again but it was still a gloomy and miserable day.

Like the rain, the birds arrived slowly and a lone siskin started things off…

…although when it looked left, it saw a bird arriving…

…and when it looked right, it saw that another had arrived.

In the end it stopped looking around and concentrated on eating seed.

Once the siskins had taken over the whole feeder, new comers got a dusty welcome whether they came from on high…

…or on the level.

The rain occasionally eased off and the gusty wind dropped too…

…but it soon started to blow again.

I took advantage of a moment when the rain had dropped to a drizzle to walk to the shops and purchase some necessities.  There was cheese involved.  I was pleased to have the ample hood on my new coat to protect me from the rough wind.

When I got home, I checked to see what was going on in the garden.  It is quite warm today at 10 degrees C and the early daffodils seemed quite perky…

..while some crocuses…

…had even defied the elements and opened their petals.

The rhubarb is still sulking.  Following a conversation with our friend Mike, Mrs Tootlepedal is going to put a bucket over one shoot and try a little forcing.

After a quiet afternoon in front of the telly, I took a walk down to the Wauchope to see if the rain had caused it to rise.  It was still pretty calm.

This was more than I was as I went home, because a tremendous gust of wind accompanied by a mini deluge of rain filled my wellies with water and got my socks wet.

I went out again at seven o’clock in the evening when the rain had stopped to see what was what.

The Wauchope was full but not alarming but the Esk was raging.

…and dangerously close to its banks.

Quite a few others were out doing some river watching too and this lady showed my some pictures of severe flooding in our neighbouring village Newcastleton, which is just over the hill from us.

We have more than enough water in our river so here’s hoping that we don’t get more.  It was still rising even though the rain had stopped.

An orange street light at the suspension bridge showed how high the water is.

More strong winds and rain are forecast for tomorrow so we will just have to wait and see what happens.

A siskin is the flying bird of the day.

Dennis comes before Dennis

The guest picture of the day comes from Dropscone’s pre-Brexit visit to Amsterdam.  He felt that I didn’t have enough pigeons on my recent blogs.

We are awaiting the arrival of storm Dennis.  In the meantime, Dropscone came for coffee this morning.  Local readers will be well aware that Dropscone’s Sunday name is also Dennis, and he remarked as he left after coffee, that he thought that Dennis was a pretty silly name for a storm.  Whether Storm Dennis will be a silly storm or a serious one remains to be seen.

As Dropscone and I sipped coffee and ate fine treacle scones, some preliminary rain arrived and Mrs Tootlepedal, who was out doing business on her bicycle got thoroughly soaked before she got home.

As did the birds.  I thought that this picture summed up the day quite well…

…until I took this one.

We had both goldfinches…

…and siskins today…

…and plenty of rain as you can see.

This goldfinch had also been listening to its mother.

Fortunately a very interesting magazine arrived through the post so I had a lot of good reading to help me pass the time while the rain continued but by mid afternoon, the rain had stopped so I put my nose out of the door.

And then followed it with the rest of me, suitably attired for more possible rain.

Our smaller bridges were using both their arches to good effect, both across the Wauchope….

…and the Ewes.

The Esk was slightly less brown than the other two rivers but it wasn’t short of water.

I crossed the river and went up to the High Street.

The data miners at the Archive Centre have been rightly complaining of chilly draughts.  As it happened, Nancy, our treasurer, found that she had a couple of old curtains to spare after improvements to her ancestral castle so Mrs Tootlepedal has been at work with her needle today and one of them is now hanging over one of the draughty doorways….

…with another to follow soon.

I continued my walk over another couple of bridges, noting that the rain had caused any trace of snow to disappear from the town and quite a lot of the snow to disappear from our surrounding  hills too.

Doubtless the melting snow had contributed to the water in the rivers.  The waterside birds had to take care not to get washed away and mostly stood on the river banks.

A lone gull was at its post on the Kilngreen and Mr Grumpy was supervising a group of ducks who had found some relatively calm water to swim in.

He didn’t look to happy about the task.

Considering how high the water level was, I am not surprised.

Looking up at the mast on the top of Warbla, it was hard to imagine that I had been standing there a couple of days ago in brilliant sunshine looking down on a snow covered scene.

The Duchess Bridge, having only one big span, doesn’t care how high the water gets.

It was still pretty gloomy even without any rain but there were plenty of snowdrops about to brighten the afternoon up…

…and I found a couple of tiny hazel flowers to add a splash of colour….

…though the camera and I had to look jolly hard to see them.

In the evening, Mike and Alison came round and as Alison and I had both been practising a bit, we had a most enjoyable time playing our duets.  As we packed our music away, Alison remarked, “Everyone should play duets, ” and I can’t disagree with her.

Stormy Dennis is due to arrive at about breakfast time tomorrow and as we are already pretty soggy, we can only hope that the forecast is once again worse than the actuality.

A siskin, half hidden by a sheet of rain, is the flying bird of the day.

Delayed gratification

Today’s guest picture comes from Venetia.  Knowing that I like trees, she sent me this sunlit picture from Margery Fish’s East Lambrook Manor Garden which she recently visited.  She tells me that it has excellent plant sales.

I could hear some heavy rain in the night so I woke up expecting to see that the snow in our garden had disappeared.  It had hung on so it appears that the rain must have been rather sleety.

The lawn covering is more ice than snow but it had survived yesterday’s sunshine and the overnight showers so it get prizes for pertinacity even if it doesn’t look very sparkly.

The poor crocuses have been sitting around for ages now,  waiting for a warm and sunny day to open their petals…

…but the honeysuckles are getting their spring leaves out regardless…

…and the snowdrops continue to shine.

While I was out in the garden, I noticed a reflective chaffinch pondering on life, the universe and everything.

We should have been going to Edinburgh today to see Matilda but an appalling weather forecast had persuaded us to tell her parents that we would probably not be coming.  It tuned out that the morning wasn’t too bad and we could have driven to Lockerbie without too much difficulty.  All the same, the gloom of the forecast had pervaded our minds and left us unwilling to risk a long journey, so we rang to confirm that we wouldn’t be going.

The day improved as it went along and in the end we decided that we ought to got to Carlisle to buy a baby car seat as our other granddaughter is coming to visit us next week.  We felt a bit guilty about this but our guilt was assuaged when we checked the railway company’s app and found that trains to Edinburgh from Lockerbie had being cancelled anyway as a result of overhead line difficulties.    We had made a good decision.

I spent some time before lunch watching the birds.

There was a good deal of posing going on.

A chaffinch was being cautions and quizzical on the feeder pole…

…a blackbird was checking to see if the seed was too his taste…

…a siskin was out on a limb…

…while another was having a snack.

On the ground, a dunnock was pretending to be a rock..

…while up above, a chaffinch was obeying her mother’s instruction to sit up straight.

We were visited by five pigeons today…

…and two doves.

When it came to approaching the feeder, different techniques were in operation,

There was sneaking in from the back….

..putting your best feet forward…

…and using no feet at all.

After lunch, we drove to Carlisle in amazingly friendly road conditions and when we got there, the friendliness continued.  A very helpful man at Halfords met our wish for a car baby seat by installing the showroom model in the car, checking that it fitted and that it was what we wanted, taking it out again, selling us a new one in a box, taking it out of the box and fitting that one in the car and finally waving us on our way.  Amazon can’t do that.

As regular readers will know, we suffered a disappointment on our wedding anniversary  in January when we drove all the way to Carlisle to go to the pictures only to find that the cinema was unexpectedly closed because of a problem with the water supply.  We were more lucky today.

The cinema was open, the  film which we wanted to see was still on and there were plenty of seats available.  We took two of them and watched The Private Life of David Copperfield.  It was a very interesting film.  Mrs Tootlepedal enjoyed it without reservation.  I enjoyed it too but would have enjoyed it more if the camerawork and editing had been a bit more restful.

The drive home went without trouble, although we passed a large sign warning of of impending heavy rain.

We have had quite enough rain already and when I looked at Mary Jo’s scientific rain gauge this morning…

…I found that it was full to the brim, showing over six inches of recent rain.  I emptied it and I hope that it will take some time before it is filled up again.

The flying bird of the day is an expansive siskin.

Putting my boots on

Today’s guest picture comes from my brother Andrew.  He had a moment to wander around in Borrowash this morning and was surprised to find a giraffe in the woods.  You can see it too if you look carefully.  It didn’t move a lot, he tells me.

Last night I had wondered whether we would wake to a winter wonderland or sodden slush and when the curtains opened this morning, the reality was somewhere between the two.  There had been more snow overnight and the hills had a good covering but there was still plenty of green to be seen in the garden and the roads were slushy.

The sun was shining and I thought that I ought to visit the winter wonderland and ignore the slush, so I put my walking boots on and headed for the hills.

I carefully chose our smallest hill and stopped on the way to look back over the town.  It was a good day to be out and about.

I got a short way up the Meikleholm  Hill track and stopped to catch my breath and look around.  Sunshine on snow, if it is not too deep, brings out details and I could see a fan shape near a pylon on the lower sloped of Whita across the the other side of the town.

A glimpse of some snowy hills encouraged me to climb a bit higher…

…but I met the  owner of these footprints and he told me that it was very cold and windy on the top of the hill…

…and as it was clouding over and the forecast had suggested a good chance of more snow, I chickened out and walked back down off the hill and onto the Becks track.  I settled for a walk across the Becks Burn and back home by the road.  I hoped that I would get back before the snow started again.

My friend Ada had sent me message a day or two ago to say that primroses were out along the track so I kept my eyes open and saw one for myself.  Shortly afterwards I passed a fine display of catkins.

I got down to the Auld Stane Brig and thought about heading home along the road.

But the clouds had moved away and the sun was out again, so I thought that I might have time to climb up the lower slopes of Warbla and come back down the track to the park to make my walk a little more interesting.

I wasn’t the only one to have used the track today…

…and this was no surprise as dog walkers get everywhere.

This short track was quite steep and even a little snow makes walking harder work and I was happy to stop and look back across the Wauchope from time to time.

The light on Calfield Rig was interesting.

And I could have stood for a long time looking at the snowy slopes…

…but it was chilly so I walked up the path a bit and then had another look in a different direction.  The light and shade there were interesting too.

I got to the point where my path met the main track from the top of Warbla and turned to go down to the town. Then I turned back and looked up the track to the summit.

It was irresistible so I telephoned Mrs Tootlepedal to tell her of my whereabouts and then set off up the hill.

It was quite hard to make quick progress as I had to keep stopping to look around, both to enjoy the wider view as sunshine and clouds alternated in a brisk wind…

…and to use the zoom on the Lumix to focus in on small details that caught the eye on distant hills.  There was some deep snow on Bauchle Hill further up the Esk valley.

I pressed on though, using the helpful footprints in the snow left by a pair of dog walkers who had gone up the track before me.  Without the help of the dog walkers, I don’t think that I could have continued as the wind had blown quite a bit of snow onto the track and it was well over six inches deep at times.  I would have skipped through that as a boy but it was a more serious consideration now.

Still, I got high enough to look back down over the town….

…and as I got to the flatter part of the track near the summit, the snow got thinner because much of it had been blown away by the strong winds and I was able to stride out with youthful exuberance (almost).

The views from the top were well worth any effort I had had to expend in getting up the hill.

Thanks to the rapid passing of the clouds, the light was different every time I looked and it would have been very tempting to spend quite a bit of time on the top of the hill taking pictures…

…but as you can see from the snow glued to the trig point, the wind was brisk and the windchill factor was enough to make standing around for too long unattractive…

…quite apart from the possibility of being literally blown over while taking pictures of Whita.

So I took one last picture….

…looked at some looming clouds coming up behind me, and scuttled back down the hill as fast as my legs (and two stout walking poles) would carry me.

As it turned out, there was no need for a rush as the snow didn’t start again until well into the afternoon.  But I had had the best of the day’s sunshine while I was out on the hill so I was happy.

I was also happy to sit down for some lunch after a strenuous four and a half mile outing.

I had a quick look at the birds in a sunny moment after lunch.

The pigeon was back…

…and when the snow started again, the siskins were queuing up to kick…

…and shout at each other.

I settled down to the computer and put in some useful time entering more of the newspaper index into the Langholm Archive Group database and learning songs for a choir competition when we will have to do without books.

Mrs Tootlepedal found a dry spell to cycle about the town, combining some business with some shopping and when she go back, she made an excellent chicken stew for our tea.

We should be going to Edinburgh tomorrow to see Matilda but with more snow forecast, I think it most likely that we will stay at home.

The flying birds of the day are that flock of siskins which was back again.  They love to perch on the walnut tree, leap into the air, swirl about a bit and then settle back in the tree.  Perhaps, like me, they get a bit cold if they have to stand around too long.