Taking the long view

Today’s guest picture comes from my brother Andrew.  He was tempted by this large pre-Halloween spider mallow shortcake but a quick look at the nutrition information revealed that he would have to take two or more days to eat it to stay within his health guidelines, so he gave it a miss.

I had a rotten night’s sleep and while Mrs Tootlepedal went off to a business meeting, I was more than happy to idle the morning away with nothing more demanding than the crossword, sweeping the leaves off the middle lawn and washing the car,  Those who know me well will be amazed to hear that I washed our car, but when you carelessly buy a white car, even the most dirt blind person can’t avoid noticing when it turns brown.

I also spent a little time stalking the garden birds.

Once again, a dunnock is my pick of the day, though the robin ran it close

We have had a small but tasty crop of autumn raspberries and the very late hosta is a continuing delight.

There are some good survivors among the humble flowers and the Crown Princess has perked up again.

After lunch, Mrs Tootlepedal looked at the fine weather and suggested a walk.  She likes to go somewhere away from my regular walks if possible, so we drove to the top of Callister and checked out a track there.

It was alright at the beginning as we passed this little bridge under the road which we had just driven along…

…but the track soon became very soggy so we retraced our steps and tried walking in the opposite direction.  It looked as though a weather front might be looming up…

…but we kept walking until we got to the end of the track about half a mile on.  There was plenty to see on both little walks.

I think that the yellow flower is a prickly sow thistle, the painted lady looked a bit pale and battered but flew about quite cheerfully…

…and the clover and lichen were both doing very well.

There was fungus and more lichen beside the track…

…and some larches turning to gold among the spruces.

The track led us towards an artificial pond that was made when the area was first planted with trees.  It was said that it was to attract ducks but it looks neglected and overgrown now, more marsh than pond….and not a duck in sight.

 

We strolled back to the car and drove a few hundred yards along the road back down the hill.  There we parked and took a forestry track along the other side of the road.

The track was rich in wild flowers, including this very impressive multi stemmed dandelion look alike.

And although the clouds were still looming, the sun stayed out and made things look very colourful.

There were lichens of many kinds on our way….

…and lots of colourful details too.

We went far enough along the gently climbing track to enjoy some splendid views over the neighbouring hills…

…with the sun shining on the monument six miles away…

…and the Solway plain lying below us with the northern English fells in the distance.

I liked the way that seemingly arbitrary larches had sneaked in among the regulation spruces.

When we had enjoyed the views for long enough, we turned to go back to the car, passing tiny forests of moss and a smooth clump of deer grass….

…and two very interesting patches of something slimy or moldy (or both) on the track.

The track, which was was rather bare and severe when it was first put in a few years ago, has grown into the landscape now and it was a pleasure to walk along it in the late afternoon sunshine.

As we turned the corner into the sun, we had the choice of the yellow brick road…

…or the straight and narrow.

We probably didn’t walk much more than three miles at the most but it was a very worthwhile excursion and we felt that we thoroughly deserved our cup of tea and a biscuit when we got home.

We would normally have been in Edinburgh on a Thursday afternoon visiting Matilda but both her parents are a bit poorly and her other grandparents were visiting already so we didn’t feel a visit would really be a good thing.

On our walk, we found ourselves under a fairly busy flight path for a while so the flying bird of the day is a bit bigger than the normal ones.

 

Sconesongcycle

Today’s guest picture comes from Mary Jo.  She escaped just in time from the Manitoba snow storm and arrived in London to find that it was raining a lot instead.  In the end the rain stopped for long enough for her to visit Kew Gardens where she encountered these  splendidly prickly plants.

After our short spell of better weather, the weather gods had decided to bring us back down to earth today and it was raining heavily when we got up.   Mrs Tootlepedal bravely cycled off in the rain on business after breakfast while I did the sensible thing and stayed at home and arranged to have coffee with Sandy and Dropscone.

Dropscone brought his usual supply of good scones and we sconed, sipped and chatted away as the rain fell.

Mrs Tootlepedal came back from the town and we squeezed another cup from the pot for her.

After coffee, I had time to do the crossword and start a tarte tatin off before we had lunch,  After lunch, the rain finally eased off and I was able to get out into the garden.

There were birds posing for me all over the place.

The rather scruffy male blackbird is looking better…

…even though the female doesn’t think much of him yet.

The sparrows often have a bath in the dam behind the house and then, like this one, flit up up onto the lilac to have a flutter and a shoogle to get dry again.

A bird skulked in the shadows on the fence…

…before flying up into the rowan tree to reveal that it was a dunnock or hedge sparrow.  It is obviously a bit slow in learning the difference between a fence, a tree and a hedge.

As you can see, the sun had come out by this time, so I took a quick look at some clematis…

…and a fuchsia which is coming out ridiculously late for the first time this year, together with a dahlia which is hanging on very well after looking as though it was well past it.

Then, as it was too good a day to miss by now, I got my bike out and checked to see how my legs were feeling after two busy days.

It turned out that they were feeling fine and they carried me round my customary twenty mile Canonbie circuit slowly but without complaining.

There is a spot along the way where the grass always turns golden brown at this time of year.

I didn’t stop for many pictures as this is a well documented ride already but I needed a breather after 15 miles so I took a look up stream from the Hollows Bridge…

…and a bit later on was much struck by the golden colour of some bracken on the old A7

The sun is getting low in the sky all day now and the trees on the far bank were casting interesting shadows on the old distillery building as I crossed Skippers Bridge.

When I got home, I turned out the tarte tatin and while Mrs Tootlepedal made a pot of tea, I cut a couple of slices of the tarte to go with it.  I added some ice cream to my slice and in my view, it would be hard to find a better after-ride refreshment.

I was so refreshed indeed that after I had had a shower, I went out for a short walk.  I was motivated partly by the tarte, partly by the lovely evening light and mostly by the fact that my physio has told me to walk more.

It is not long until the clocks go back so evening walks at this time of day will disappear for some months so I was pleased to able to enjoy such a beautiful light today.

The shadows were falling fast but I had time to enjoy some gentle autumn colour on my way.  The pictures speak for themselves, I think.

By the time that I had crossed two bridges and was approaching the third, the sun was ready to sink behind the hill and the shadows were lengthening…

…until the monument was in the sun but most of the New Town was in the shade.

I swept  a lot of walnut leaves off the front lawn when I got home.

We had courgette fritters for tea and then I went to sing with the Langholm choir.  Because of some illness going round, we had a select turnout, but we had a most enjoyable sing all the same.

As the sun went down on my walk in the afternoon, it began to feel a little chilly and I was wondering if we would have a frost tonight.  However, it was still quite warm when I walked home from the choir and when I looked at our thermometer a moment ago, it said that it is 9 degrees C.  The forecast claims that it won’t get lower than 5 degrees overnight.  We have been very lucky to have kept our flowers for so long and it looks as thought they may still be there tomorrow.

No flying bird of the day today but I was happy to see a starling back perching on the holly tree again.

Flattened

Today’s guest picture comes from my sister Susan who noticed that some keen guerrilla gardener had embellished one of the trees in her street.

The forecast was for light winds and a dry, cloudy day here today, so I formulated a more realistic plan than yesterday.  It had exactly the same result.  I went out cycling at about eleven o’clock having disposed of a leisurely breakfast, the crossword and some coffee.  I like it when a plan comes together.

I also added to my plan a slightly less challenging route than yesterday.  The downside of that was less scenery as I was ploughing a familiar furrow.  However, it was a good day for cycling as there was not enough breeze to get the wind turbines turning.

When I stopped after ten miles for a banana and a swig of water, I thought that the bare tree, the grey clouds and the power lines made for a somewhat gloomy picture…

…but a look in another direction from the same spot brought a little more colour into the day.

Every now and again, there was a touch of genuine colour to enjoy.

As you can see in the picture above, the verges and the hedges have been thoroughly trimmed so there is not a lot to see there and the only bit of flower colour that I passed was on the edge of the motorway between Gretna and Carlisle.

When they  built the new motorway and the service road that runs beside it which I use, they planted a lot of shrubs and sowed many wild flowers.  As a result it is often more colourful than some of the long established country roads.

I paused at the old Toll House at Gretna and fuelled up on a plate of egg and chips and a latte.  Thus refreshed, I cycled down into England and enjoyed this little scene at Blackford before I crossed the main road and began my journey home.

I stopped at the bridge over the River Lyne at Cliff for a tuna sandwich and tried to catch a reflection of the birds flying above the water to use as flying bird of the day.  I didn’t capture a flying bird but I quite liked the reflections of the trees anyway.

And bridge parapets are often interesting places…

…if you look closely.

My final stop was only a few miles from the end of my ride.  I took this picture to show the continued tree felling at Irvine House.  The road will look quite different when they are finished.

Then I turned and headed over the bridge and back to Langholm.

I was overcome by decimal fever when I got to the town and pedalled on through it for  a couple of miles to bring my total for the day up to 55 miles and the total for the last two days up to 100 miles.  This seemed a good round number.

Thanks to the flattish nature of my route, I was able to maintain a better average speed today than yesterday.  I was aiming to do the first forty miles in under three hours which is par for the course for me these days and I achieved this target by the handsome margin of ten seconds.  Rather to my surprise, I kept the same average speed up for the rest of the journey, helped by the fact that the breeze had strengthened a bit by this time and was pushing me up the hill.  As I left Longtown on my way home, the wind turbines were just creaking into action.

When I got home, I found Mrs Tootlepedal taking tea and shortbread with our neighbour Liz and her dog Riley.  Liz had very kindly brought over a tin of shortbread as a present from Riley for looking after him for a few days last week.  He is a thoughtful dog.

After tea and biscuits, I went out to see if I could find a flying bird in the garden.  There were still plenty of flowers (and a colourful leaf) about…

…and even a bit of interesting fungus on a fallen branch…

…but the birds were keeping their distance…

…so I was just thinking of getting Mrs Tootlepedal to throw Mr Grumpy’s wooden cousin up into the air for a trick shot…

…when fortunately a flying bird passed overhead in the nick of time.

Here is a map of today’s outing and those interested can get further details by clicking on the image.

Pushing the boundary

Today’s guest picture, like yesterday’s, comes from Canada but shows a different view of Thanksgiving Day there.  Langholm exile Joyce sent me this view from her window in Ontario.

We had an altogether better day today here as far as the weather went, with not even a hint of a raindrop about.  My plan was to make the best if the day by leaping up early and bicycling madly all day.

In real life, I got up rather late, had a leisurely breakfast and did the crossword and only then felt strong enough to get my bike out. For some reason, I am feeling a bit tired in general at the moment and far from bicycling madly about, I kept to a very steady speed indeed, especially when it came to going up hills.

And my route today had plenty of hills compared with my usual flattish outings.  I headed north out of town and aimed for the county boundary twenty miles away at the top of a hill.

There were plenty of excuses to stop along the way to take pictures.

I liked these poplars….

…and there was an amazing crop of crab apples on a tree beside the road.

I followed the Esk to the point where the Black and White Esk rivers meet.  (I stopped just so that I could take a Black and White picture in full colour.)

I then cycled across the bridge over the Black Esk and followed the White Esk to its source.

The road to Eskdalemuir up the west bank of the White Esk is one of my favourites.  It is quiet, well surfaced and has gentle gradients.

My route took me through the village at Eskdalemuir and past the Tibetan monastery, where the stupa was sparkling in the sunshine.

The road climbs steadily to just over 1000 feet…

…so my bike was happy to have a rest while I ate a tuna roll at the county boundary.

I ignored the charms of the Scottish Borders and after a ten minute break, I pedalled back home through Dumfries and Galloway.

I took the same route home as I had taken on the way out as the alternative route down the east bank of the river has a very steep hill which my knees were not anxious to face,

On one of my stops for refreshment and rest, I looked back up the Esk valley.  It appeared to be very benign in the gentle sunshine but it can be a harsh place in the winter.

Although there was quite a bit of cloud about, it was so thin that the sun shone through it it all day.

My route took me along the Eskdale Prehistoric Trail and I stopped at one of the sites while I ate a banana.  There are information boards at the sites and some of the boards are more informative than others.

This one is unusually honest.

This is the natural amphitheatre.  One of these days I am going down the path to try out the acoustics.

It has been a very good year for cones and these trees along the Esk at Bailliehill were dripping with them.

 

There was a little autumn colour here and there along the route and this tree beside the graveyard at Bentpath was the best.

 

I walked down to the river at the Bentpath Bridge but there are so many trees in front of the bridge that I couldn’t get a shot of the whole bridge and this glimpse through one of the arches was the best that I could do.

I pottered on gently and got home after 45 miles at very restful 11 mph.   As I had climbed over 2000 ft on my way, I was quite happy to have got home at all.

Mrs Tootlepedal had organised an exhibition of her Embroiderers’ Group work in the Welcome to Langholm office in the morning, and she had done some good gardening in the afternoon, so we had both had a full day.

After a cup of tea, I wandered round the garden.   Some plants were complaining that I had left them out of my review yesterday.

The most surprising is this hosta.  It has sent up flowering stems from some very brown leaves.

The Icelandic poppies are still flowering in spite of poor dead heading from me.

And the lamiums haven’t stopped at all since March.

Another little rose has taken advantage of the continuing warmth.

The fuchsia by the back gate has produced a large crop of berries.  Mrs Tootlepedal thinks that they might be edible but we are not going to try them.

My flute pupil Luke came and we put in some heavy work on developing his counting skills.  It is obviously an area where I need to hone my teaching skills!

The flying bird of the day is a blackbird having a rest before a big night out on the tiles.

Small choir, big choir

After yesterday’s glorious sunrise at Wemyss, today’s guest picture goes to the opposite extreme.  Lucie has sent me this scene as Canada’s Thanksgiving Day approaches in Manitoba.  She tells me that my regular Manitoba correspondent Mary Jo has wisely popped over to London to avoid this sort of thing.

We had neither a glorious sunrise nor a heavy fall of snow here today.  The day started out being very grey and got steadily worse as it went along.

It was dry enough to cycle to church where we had a modest choir turnout and  a vigorous and interesting visiting minister to lead the service.

Then it was still dry as we cycled home but that happy state lasted about half an hour before the drizzle started.

I nipped round the garden just to record the state of the flowers

The argyranthemums in the chimney pot outside the kitchen window laugh at rain.

The sedums came out too late this year to be of much interest to bees and butterflies but they are still adding good colour to the flower beds.

The transplanted nerines obviously like their new home.

Begonias are soldiering on.  On our walk yesterday we met a lady whose entire stock of begonias had collapsed.  She lives a little higher up the hill and in an exposed position so we are lucky to be in the shelter of the town.

Rosy Cheeks doesn’t love the rain but can cope with it.

And the fuchsias seem to be totally waterproof.  They would like a little more sunshine though.

Calendulas glow whatever the weather.

Although they are hanging their heads a bit, these cosmos flowers continue to thrive.

The red astrantias have given up completely, but the white ones seem to grow a bit more beautiful each day.

I am surprised to see the honeysuckle on the fence still producing flowers…

…but not so surprised about the nasturtiums.  They will keep flowering until the very last.

Crown Princess Margareta has not given up entirely but she does seem to have lost heart and colour a bit.

And the dahlias are getting depressed as well.

All the same, there are a lot of flowers still to enjoy so we are not complaining.

The leeks are not complaining either.

In the afternoon, we went to Carlisle to sing with the community choir and nearly suffered from a full car park for the second day running.  There was a lot of sports activity going on in the rain at the school where we meet and the car park was absolutely full.  Luckily, on this occasion I did find a spare space round a corner.

Our proper conductor was back in action and we had a good practice.

We had stopped on our way to the choir to stock up on cheese and I had made a slow cooked lamb stew after breakfast and some wholemeal bread so we were well supplied with nourishing food when we got home through the rain.

The flying bird of the day is a blackbird which looks as though it might not have the oomph to fly at all.  It did take off though, as soon as I had finished taking its picture.

A full day

Today’s guest picture comes from our son Tony.  He sent me this gorgeous shot of the sun rising over East Wemyss this morning.  (I suspect that he may have run the image through the filter on his phone.)

We had a sunny day here too and Mrs Tootlepedal thought that it would be a good day for an excursion with a nice walk in it.  I agreed and we set off to visit Buttermere, one of the small lakes in the Lake District.   It has a good, mainly flat six mile path round it which we have walked before and which we thought would be a suitable test for our feet.

The perfect sunny October outing turned out to be slightly less than perfect in two ways.  The weather let us down a little and as we got into England, it started to rain.  Although the rain had finally stopped by the time we got to Buttermere, the busy weekend tourist traffic hadn’t and Buttermere’s car parks turned out to be so full to bursting that there was no room for one more car, not even a small one.

We were a bit at a loss but in the end, we turned back the way we had come and found a place to park beside Crummock Water, another lake a mile or two away,  This was a delightful spot and the clouds broke up as we got there.

Crummock water is not completely surrounded by hills…

…but there are plenty of hills to look at.   They are popular with walkers and we could see a track running up the little rocky valley behind us.

 

I walked up the hill behind the car park and soon got good views of the lake….

…and I took a panorama of as much of the Lake as I could see.  There was a smir of rain falling at the south end.

Click on the picture for a bigger version.

I walked up a handy little path beside a small gill that was tumbling down the hillside….

…and enjoyed several little cascades.

I would have liked to go a little further up the hill but the ground was very rough and when I looked back down the hill, I could see Mrs Tootlepedal coming towards me.

I was glad that I had not gone any higher as I stumbled back down the hill to meet her.  Going up is still not too bad these days but going down rough and steep ground is murder on the knees.

The Lake District hills are not big hills but they are often very dramatic and I took a last view south…

…and went past this local sheep looking for a blade of grass among the bracken…

…before meeting up with Mrs Tootlepedal and going back to the car.

We decided to cut our losses and head for somewhere to eat and then go home.

The roads here are very narrow and there was plenty of motor  traffic, many cyclists and some brave pedestrians to share the roads with so progress was slow as we went [past Loweswater and headed for a wider road.

We stopped when we found a moment for a last look back at the hills…

…and found a suitable cafe at a garden centre near Cockermouth.

The cafe was bright and cheerful but rather quiet as a gas explosion had closed a busy road nearby and caused congestion in the town.  This had reduced their custom and we got served very promptly as a result.

The garden centre was attached to a fine house but the plant area was surrounded by tall trees and rather gloomy.

It is the end of the season too and nothing caught Mrs Tootlepedal’s eye, not even the things on the ‘reduced to clear’ stand, so we were soon on our way home.

We got home safely though there was more rain on the way.  We were just on the edge of the shower and as a result we drove along under a spectacular rainbow for several miles.

It was sunny in Langholm all day so after a cup of tea, we set out to make up for some of the walking that we had missed in the Lake District by strolling round the Becks Burn walk.

Mrs Tootlepedal pointed out a chrysalis on the outside of our kitchen window as we left the house.

We may not have the mountains and picturesque hills of the Lake District, but it is no hardship to walk through the countryside round Langholm on a sunny evening.

When we looked down at the Auld Stane Brig, it does seem that many trees are going to lose their leaves without showing any colour this year.

I noticed that the winter jasmine at our back door has come out, a sign of the times.

All in all, although it wasn’t quite the outing that we had planned, it wasn’t a bad day.  It is always a pleasure to visit the Lake District, even if we didn’t stay long.  We did about 120 miles in the Zoe and still had at least 40 reliable miles left in the battery so that gave us some confidence in how far we could drive without having to charge the car. And we had an enjoyable walk in the end too.

The flying bird of the day is a chicken pretending to be a sheep.

Three things

I was looking through my files when I found today’s guest picture.  It shows a Liverpool gull hoping to get Bruce to open his hotel window and give it a snack.  It was taken before Bruce went off to Helsinki.  He gets about a lot.

It was sunny and windy here today but as there was no rain all day, we liked the sun and ignored the wind as far as we could.

I had a generally relaxed day with coffee and conversation in the morning, a battle between bicycle and breeze in the afternoon and some top quality blues music in the evening.

The coffee and conversation was in the company of Dropscone who had brought some treacle scones with him in a traditional fashion.  He had been playing golf yesterday but as he missed a one foot putt rather carelessly at one point, he was not as happy about that as he might have been.

When he left, I had a walk round the garden and was pleased to see a bee visiting.

The butterflies have gone but there are still occasional bees.

I picked up quite a lot of walnuts.  They are not hard to spot.

Then I sieved a little compost and while I was in the vegetable garden I dug up a good sized leek and took a picture of a chive…

…and I looked up to see a starling on the holly tree,  I like the way that starlings look as though they are covered in hearts.

I went to inspect the middle lawn and noted the number of fuchsia flowers still waiting to come out in the bed beside the lawn.  We have got another week before a frosty morning is forecast so they still have time.

The middle lawn looked as though it might need a cut as the grass has started to grow again after I thought that it had decided to stop for the year.  A sparrow caught my eye as I went to get the mower out…

…and there turned out to be enough grass to make it worthwhile to mow the lawn.  I sat on the new bench and admired the result.

As I sat there, a bee visited a nicotiana beside me but it got stuck in so thoroughly that there was no trace of it when I looked.  It came out too quickly for me to catch but then flew down on to the ground in front of me and posed for a picture.

There is a small but colourful corner next to the bench.

I went in and used the leek to make some soup for lunch.  Mrs Tootlepedal had made some wholemeal bread yesterday and it went very well with the soup and some cheese.

After lunch, I went out for a cycle ride.  I had ambitions for a ride of thirty or thirty five miles in the sunshine but after spending half an hour battling into a wind gusting up to thirty miles an hour, I turned left and headed down to Canonbie for a twenty mile circuit with the wind mostly across or behind.

This was a good choice as it took me 31 minutes to do the first five miles and 64 minutes to do the next fifteen.

I was too busy pedalling to take pictures until I got the wind behind me at Canonbie.

Apart from the breeze, it was a lovely day for a pedal and the trees along the Esk at Byreburnfoot looked very seasonal.

There is a little patch of grass where I stood to take the picture above and for some reason, it is a great place for fungus every year.

I often wonder what is buried beneath it.

My Canonbie route takes me along two sections of the old main road.  This section at Hollows was by-passed when half of the road fell into the river nearly forty years ago.

And this section at Auchenrivock was bypassed more recently when another section of the road slid into the river.  I took a poor picture of it but have put it in anyway to show local readers that they are cutting trees down here and the tarmac is seeing the light of day for the first time for ages.

The tree felling is near Irvine House.

I stopped at Skippers Bridge and thought that the steps that the Langholm Walks Group put up for Walk 7 looked very inviting..

…but I didn’t walk any further than down to the waterside to look through the bridge at the old distillery.

When I got home, I found Mrs Tootlepedal grappling with a very intractable website which required several codes to be entered to gain access to it.  Unfortunately, however many she put in, none seemed to be able to unlock the door so she gave up in despair and made me a cup of tea (and a slice of wholemeal toast) instead.

I went out for look round the garden and decided that the front lawn might need a mow too, so I mowed it.  It turned out that it didn’t really need a mow as it get less of the sun as it gets lower in the sky than the middle lawn and I didn’t get much grass off it at all.

I took a picture of one of our most long lived flowering plants, the ornamental strawberry which has been in flower since the beginning of June…

…and then went in to have a shower.

After a meal of ham and eggs, I left Mrs Tootlepedal to watch Gardeners’ World and walked down to the Buccleuch Centre to attend a concert of mostly blues music sung and played by Maggie Bell and Dave Kelly, veterans of the British music scene.

It was a most enjoyable evening and I especially admired Dave Kelly’s guitar playing.  (You can hear a sample of his work here if you wish.   It sounded much better when he played it live tonight but it gives you an idea of his skills and style.)

The flying starling of the day is not showing off its wings for once.