Great view

Today’s flower is Euphorbia

The day started as all days should. Dropscone and I pedalled round the morning run is very good conditions. Owing to getting my asthma puffer to work properly, I felt very good and we did a more than respectable time for the trip. In the afternoon, Mrs Tootlepedal and I put our bikes in the back of the Kangoo and went down to Longtown. We parked in the town and did a fifteen mile circle. We started by going past Arthuret Church and then, crossing both the Carlisle road and the Brampton road, we headed up into the gentle hills behind Longtown. On reaching Easton after a climb of about 100m, we were rewarded by a beautiful panoramic view. It took in, from left to right,  the Pennines, the North Lakes hills,  the Solway Firth itself and the whole of the Solway plain, Criffel beyond Dumfries and Burnswark up towards Lockerbie. It was magnificent. An added bonus was that we then basically coasted back down to Longtown. The roads were well surfaced and very quiet. At one stage, we cycled over six miles without meeting a car in either direction. The only disappointment was that both the Longtown cafes were shut when we returned. I mowed a lawn when we got home to make up for this.

In the post of 16 July, I reported that Mrs Tootlepedal was worried by the damage that the strong winds were doing to her runner beans. However, as you can see from the picture, the crop was not harmed in the long term. In fact it has been so abundant that we are eating runner beans every day, freezing them and bombarding neighbours and friends with them whether they want them or not.

On the ciabatta front I have had to rest from developing my new found skills because we have had visitors in for the last three days and visitors require traditional toast and not fancy foreign stuff. Traditional toast requires traditional bread and thankfully the bread machine is most reliable and turns good looking loaves day after day. However, we have family coming tomorrow so I hope to have ciabatta for them (whether they like it or not).

In the evening I went to the Archive Centre as usual on a Thursday and got some useful work done in between entertaining a number of visitors to the Centre. The day was rounded off by a visit to the beer research centre. The beer was good.