A bit of a whirl

Today’s guest picture is another Bermuda view from Joyce.  She tells me that this is the causeway to St George at dawn.

The forecast for today was  not promising but after a very heavy shower overnight with added hail, it was quite a decent day when we got up, and there were none of the threatened icy patches as I walked up to the town after breakfast to do some archiving business.

As I walked back, a buzzing in the sky made me look back towards Whita and I could that the helicopter, which Ada had seen on the ground yesterday, had taken to the air today.  I couldn’t work out what it was carrying though.

When I got home, I met Riley, suitably clad for possible rain, just about to take our neighbour Liz out for a walk.

I went in and had coffee with Mrs Tootlepedal and did an easy crossword.  An ice bun may well have mysteriously disappeared during this process.

Then I went for a walk myself.  The forecast offered a twenty percent chance of rain and I hadn’t gone far before I got 100% of a sharp fall of sleet followed by some quite fierce hail.  Luckily I had my new coat on and was well armoured against the slings and arrows of outrageous weather.

And fortunately, the shower exhausted itself quite quickly and I could soon see signs of sunshine.

I crossed the Becks Burn and followed the road down to the Auld Stane Brig, which I crossed when I came to it…

…and then walked up the track onto the hill on the other side of the Wauchope Water and enjoyed a tree as I went.

Although our local hills were snow free, the higher hills further up the valley were showing a light covering.

But if you picked the right direction to look, it was a very nice day by now (especially if you were wearing a warm coat).

Looking back at the track that I had followed below the fields on the opposite side of the valley, it was hard to believe that I had been in a hailstorm not long before.

I enjoyed a bit of lichen on a boulder…

…and the view up the Esk Valley…

…and was just about to head down hill to the town when that buzzing was audible again.

The helicopter was back at work.

It was carrying a big bucket but behind it on the ground, I could see that what it had been carrying when I saw it in the morning, the ubiquitous portable loo for the convenience of the pylon workers.

It delivered its bucket load and headed back.

I could see the pylon on which the work is being done.  It stands beside the sixth green on the golf course and Dropscone is forbidden to play while the helicopter is at work.

It returned remarkably soon with another load…

…and I stood watching on the hillside while it made several trips.

When it was away getting a fresh load, I looked around.

I was using my Lumix which has a very good zoom lens to take the helicopter pictures and I pulled back to show you just how far away I was.

You can see the pylon on top corner of the golf course directly below the monument.  Considering that I was holding the camera in a rather cold hand with no support, it is evident that the Lumix is a wonderful camera for wandering photographer.

A look at the map tells me that I was about 0.8 of a mile away.  I walked down the hill a bit and rested the camera on a walks direction post to get as good a close up of the helicopter as I could.  This let me see that it very fairly calls itself a “Skyhook”.

I had a late lunch when I got home and then, as the weather still seemed pretty good, I got out my bicycle and pedalled eleven miles at a slow pace with so many clothes on that I found it hard to move my legs at all as in spite of the sunshine, the windchill made the temperature a virtual one degree C.

The busy day continued when I got home with first a visit from Mike Tinker and his finely honed tea radar and then the arrival of my flute pupil, Luke with his flute.

After Luke had gone, there was just time for some brisket of beef with nourishing vegetables, expertly cooked by Mrs Tootlepedal, for my tea and then it was time for the January Camera Club meeting.

We had a new member and enough old members to make for a good meeting with a fine selection of photographs from both home and abroad to entertain us until the tea break.  After that we settled down to watch a very well put together audio visual presentation of his holiday in Thailand which Sandy had prepared.  That rounded off an enjoyable meeting and a pretty full day.

It was so full indeed that I had no time for bird watching and so the snowdrops beside the dam are taking the place of any flying bird of the day.

A change in the weather

Today’s guest picture comes from my friend Ada who was walking along the road to Newcastelton when she saw a very unusual bird at rest on the Langholm moor.  It was there as part of the works on maintaining our pylons.

Our run of grey but dry days under a ridge of high pressure came to an end today as low pressure swept in, and we got a grey but very wet morning instead.

Luckily I was in church singing in the choir while the worst of the rain was on, but unluckily by the time that the sun came out in the afternoon, we were on our way to Carlisle to sing with our Carlisle choir so we couldn’t make much use of it.

Mrs Tootlepedal did get a moment or two to do some gardening after the rain stopped but it was still pretty wet…

…though we were very excited by this.

The changeable weather is forecast to bring frost tonight so we may have to wait a bit more until the flower opens.

I didn’t take part in the Great Garden Birdwatch this year as there are too few birds about to make spending an hour looking at not much at all a very attractive use of time.  I know that an absence of birds might as interesting to researchers as a lot of different species but it is not interesting to the onlooker.

After I had made my my mind up not to take part, a few birds appeared just to annoy me.

I haven’t seen a blackbird for a few days but today…

…I saw two…

…and the robin arrived as well.

After another very slow start, a few birds began to trickle down to the feeder around the middle of the day. It was siskin time, with first these two….

…and then two more…

… and finally a competition for perches.

A lone chaffinch tried to get into the action but the siskins were having none of that.

Mrs Tootlepedal’s fake tree is very good value and I often see birds waiting to come to the feeder taking advantage of its nailed on branches.

After lunch, we went off to Carlisle and had a most enjoyable sing with our choir.  Ellen, our musical director, is mixing up new songs to be learned with putting a bit of polish on more familiar tunes so we are getting a good mixture.

Ellen was telling me that she had to wait for two and a half hours in the emergency lane of a busy motorway last week until the breakdown man arrived to help her after a tyre blowout.  As anyone who has had to use the emergency lane of a motorway will know, this is not a happy experience, so we were pleased that she had managed to get down safely this week.

As an iced bun fell into my shopping bag when we stopped for supplies on the way home, a day which had started out looking very miserable, finished pretty well.  Especially as there were three other iced buns in the same packet.

A female siskin appears as the flying bird of the day.

A heartening murmur

Today’s guest picture comes from a member of the Archive Group.  Joyce enjoys visiting Bermuda where her husband was born, and who can blame her when the views are like this?  That is a spider lily in the foreground.

After an active day yesterday, I was happy to while away another grey morning with breakfast, coffee and the crossword merging almost indistinguishably into each other.

There weren’t many birds to distract me.  In fact these two siskins were the only ones that I saw on the feeder all morning.

We had to rouse ourselves at noon though, as it was the day of the annual lunch of the Archive Group.  I had very carelessly missed this event last year as the sun shone and I got so excited that I went for a cycle ride instead of going to the lunch and completely forgot about it.

I was reminded about that quite a few times today.

We had set several alarms to remind me about the lunch today and walked across to the Eskdale Hotel with Sandy who was passing our gate as we left.

There was a good turn out of  members and partners and we enjoyed some good food and conversation, although we were distracted for a moment when someone saw a lion roaming about the street outside the hotel.

It turned out to be taking part in a video shoot to publicise the rugby club so we weren’t too alarmed.

After lunch, we returned home for a snooze in front of the horse racing on the telly but then, alerted by another alarm, we drove up to collect Sandy and went down the road to Longtown with him.

When we had passed through the town yesterday on our way to not watch a film, we had noticed what seemed like a possible murmuration of starlings so we thought that we ought to investigate this further.

As soon as we parked, we could see a lot of starlings overhead…

…and small murmurations soon formed.

They reamined disappointingly small though and a lot of the birds flew down to a pylon…

…and sat on it.

After a while, there were signs of action on all sides.

In our experience of the murmurations at Gretna in past years, the starlings gradually gather into one huge flock but at Longtown today, they stayed stubbornly in many smaller groups.

There were one or two larger groups though and one of them gathered over the High Street.

There weren’t enough in the group to produce the striking patterns that photographers hope for but some good shapes did form and dissolve.

Things did not develop as we hoped and we could still see many separate groups of birds in almost every direction when we looked around.

It was a very cloudy day and it soon got quite dark as the street lamps came on.

All the same, it was great fun watching the starlings above the roofs getting ready to go to their roost and I took a lot of pictures in the gathering gloom.

A few more birds did join the crowd…

…and it became quite an impressive collection…

…swooping and swerving above the houses.

Strange shapes appeared…

…maybe resembling a giant fish…

…or a dove of peace…

…or perhaps just looking like an impressive amount of starlings in one place at one time.

The show lasted 25 minutes and we intend to come back again if we can get a fine evening. We will try to find a better viewpoint if we do return.

For some reason there is no flying bird of the day today.

Not getting the picture

Today’s guest picture comes from my sister Susan.  She was visiting Tunbridge Wells recently and admired the fine station clock there.  She didn’t arrive at the station by train though, as she had had to get there on a bus from Tonbridge owing to works on the line.  So, it is not just us who have a bad effect on the railways.

It was another grey day today here with very low cloud again, but as it was calm and reasonably warm, I turned down a very tempting offer of treacle scones and the tale of a trip to Amsterdam from Dropscone and got my bicycle out instead.

There was a light breeze in my face as I set off but it wasn’t enough to blow the clouds off the top of Callister…

…and it was thick enough on the top of the hill to make me wish that I had cycle lights.

However, it was not long before I was out of the clouds and safely  down the other side  of the hill.  The clouds were still pretty low….

…but at least I could see where I was going.

It wasn’t a day for stopping to take pictures and I didn’t take another until I was halfway round my route when a lichen on the motorway bridge at Harker caught my eye when i stopped for half a banana.

I was spoiled for choice when it came to bare trees in a field once I had crossed the A7 and headed towards Scaleby.  This one was on my right at one point….

…and this one was on my left.

As you can see, the clouds had lifted a bit by this time but I was under slight time pressure to get my ride completed.  I had been pretty slow against the breeze on my way out so I had to keep going on my way home.

It was our 52nd wedding anniversary today and I was hoping to mark the occasion with a 52 mile ride but I miscalculated and ended up doing 53 miles.  Ah well, the route should stand me in good stead next year.

I called in at our corner shop on the way home for some milk and a packet of biscuits so it was a useful if rather elongated trip to the shop.

Click on the map for more details of the ride.

I found Mrs Tootlepedal at work in the garden when I got home.   It isn’t the time for serious work yet and she told me that she had just been faffing around.  I had to check before using this word in a post as it sounds vaguely vulgar, but I find that faffing is a word of impeccable pedigree meaning to blow about indecisively in the wind.  Mrs Tootlepedal confirmed that this approximated to what she was doing.

I had a look round the garden and was rather depressed by a vigorous show of moss in the middle of a lawn.

I like moss but I would also like to be able to see some grass at least.

Signs of life on a viburnum were cheering.

And I hope to get better light soon to be able to take a better picture of the Sarcococca at the back door.

The reason for getting the bike ride finished on time was the need to be ready to take Mrs Tootlepedal out to see a film called The Personal History of David Copperfield, which has been well reviewed.   Mrs Tootlepedal had checked the film timings and we arrived in Carlisle on the dot for the programme to start.  All would have been well if the cinema had not been closed because of a fault in their water supply, a secret which they had kept to themselves and not revealed to their website.

We drove home.

And had fish and chips as a consolatory treat for our anniversary tea, followed by plum crumble and custard.  It is not just railway trains that fall to pieces as we approach them.

At the end of the day the feeder remained as full as it had been at the beginning so there is no trace of a sitting let alone a flying bird of the day today.

A pleasant surprise

Today’s guest picture comes from my sister Mary.  The parakeets in Hyde Park are so tame that this one came to her friend Garth’s hand without even being offered food.

In spite of being in a spell of high pressure which usually brings sunny weather, we have been getting a lot of cloud.  This has been trapped near the ground and is reluctant to disperse.  As a result we didn’t have any views to enjoy when we caught the train back north after our visit to Evie and other relatives.

What we did have was a punctual train.  We were beginning to think that we might have become railway train Jonahs, bringing lateness and delay in our wake whenever we boarded a train but today’s journey put paid to that idea.   As the train wasn’t even very full, we had a most comfortable trip and caught the bus from Carlisle to Langholm with time to spare.

Although we have had a delightful time in the south, we were still very pleased to get back home…

…even if it was even greyer in Langholm than it had been on the way up.

A few snowdrops in the garden promised a brighter future.

After a revivifying cup of tea, I took my legs out for a little stretch.  It was reasonably warm at 8°C and there wasn’t much wind so it wasn’t a hardship to be out but there wasn’t a lot of light left in the day.

I walked round Pool Corner…

…along towards the Auld Stane Brig…

…where I checked on the fencepost lichen garden…

…and then returned by the track towards the town.

Meikleholm Hill was entirely encased in cloud…

…but on the other side of the valley there was a slight lift so that I could see the mast on Warbla for a while,

The was no chance of seeing the monument on Whita though.

We had lightly boiled eggs for our tea and will go to bed early in an effort to be fit to face local life again tomorrow after the excitements of the great metropolis.

I shall take this opportunity to thank  my sisters Susan and Mary for accommodating Mrs Tootlepedal and me during our stay, and Mrs Tootlepedal’s brother and sister in law for our welcome to Marlow.  We saw nine relatives (plus two alternative grandparents) in two days which is a very reasonable return of relatives per hour spent.

I have filled the bird feeder up to the top and hope for a visit from some garden birds tomorrow but in the meantime, the only flying bird action that I saw today was a noisy parliament of rooks having a break in their discussion while I was on my walk.

Note: I don’t know what happened to the posts from my phone while I was away.  They didn’t have any allowance for comments for some reason.  The ways of WordPress are often mysterious and as far as I know, it wasn’t anything that I had done.  I am hoping that comments will be enabled on this post now I am back at my computer.

A gap of 100 years

We went to our daughter Annie’s after breakfast and then went with her and our granddaughter Evie to visit Evie’s great grandmother, Mrs Tootlepedal’s mother.

This involved a trip on two underground trains to Paddington Station…


… where we had time for a cup of coffee.

We really shouldn’t be allowed to travel on trains at the moment because we only have to get on one for it to run late.

The train we caught was modern, comfortable, with good buggy accommodation…

…but ten minutes late at Maidenhead which was enough to make us miss the connection to  Marlow

Luckily, Mrs Tootlepedal’s brother was able to collect us, although an unexpectedly closed road gave us time to admire the station clock.

We were given an excellent lunch by Mrs Tootlepedal’s brother and sister in law and then we went off to visit Mauri, Evie’s great grandmother.

You will have to take my word that this meeting of four female generations of the family took place as no photograph is available online, but it was a great moment to see Mrs Tootlepedal with her mother, her daughter and her granddaughter all at the same time.

As her mother is 103 and Evie is very small, a good stretch of history was to be seen in the room.

We got home safely (and on time!) and rounded the day off with a very good meal at a Greek restaurant with my sisters  Susan and Mary and my stepmother Patricia.

We go back to Langholm tomorrow…if we can find a reliable train to take us there.

.

A smile and a shovel

This is another phone post as we are still in London visiting relatives. Today we ventured south of the river to spend time with our granddaughter Evelyn Rose, the current holder of the title of the World’s Greatest Baby.

Soon after we arrived, Evie took us and her mother Annie to their allotment where we spent some happy time shifting manure in one direction ..


… and pernicious weedy waste in the other.

By the time that we had finished, Annie’s raised beds looked well looked after.

Mrs Tootlepedal gave things a final touch…


… as Evie supervised.


Big flying birds passed overhead…


.. while parakeets watched from neighbouring trees.


Although it was a chilly day with frost still in the ground, there was plenty of colour about as we walked about the area.


We particularly liked these winter aconites at the allotment.


But this was the most spectacular…


…and this winter honeysuckle had the best scent.

After visiting Evie’s other grandparents and briefly seeing her father, we headed back across the river (or rather under the river, as we used the tube).

We were going to go to the pictures but we left buying the tickets until it was too late and there were none left

Instead, we went back and spent the evening chatting to my sisters Mary and Susan, which is always a pleasure.

If all goes well, we shall take in more relatives tomorrow.