Today’s flower is an antique cosmos of which Mrs Tootlepedal is very fond
Mrs Tootlepedal was up very early to make breakfast for two Land’s End to John O’Groats cyclists (picture on cycling page) but they took a little time to get going so I didn’t start on my cycle run till 10 o’clock. This gave the day time to warm up which was lucky because it was quite parky early on. I went down the main road to Gretna, being Sunday with not much traffic, and then headed off to Eastriggs along the Solway coast with wonderful views of the Lake District to my left. At Eastriggs I crossed the Annan by-pass and took the Annan-Kirkpatrick road to Hollee. There I turned right on national cycle route 74 back to Rigg and Gretna and so home, a round trip of 44 miles, pretty well flat all the way. It was one of those days when cycling is an unalloyed pleasure, temperature just right, wind behind on the way home, not much traffic and the joints in perfect tune.
Mrs Tootlepedal had a busy day making the breakfast, helping with a youth production of The Boyfriend and then going to a best garden presentation for Bonnie Langholm so I didn’t see much of her. While she was out, I mowed the front lawn. I think if you look at the picture on the left, you might agree that it was time well spent. I had a pleasant sit in the garden waiting for Mrs Tootlepedal to return but between the cycling, the mowing and the flowers all around, the asthma got the better of me so when Mrs Tootlepedal said she was going for a fifteen mile ride round Enzieholm Brig, on this occasion I left her to it. While she was on her ride, a friend rang up to ask us out for drinks and when she returned we went off to see them and enjoyed a very pleasant evening, lubricated in my case by a bottle of French wine. These are the sort of friends you want.
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