Brotherly love

In response to a flood of (at least two) requests, today’s picture is a set of Dropscone’s treacle scones beside the ingredients.  The recipe is below.

Recipe:

1 and a half cups of self raising flour.
Pinch of salt if required
Half cup of milk (your choice, full or skimmed)
2 spoons of treacle, infuse into milk (warm milk in microwave, first)
Put all into a bowl and mix. If too soft, add more flour, if too stiff, more milk.
Dust table with flour and mould into a round shape, but don’t over work.
Flatten and quarter and place into a dry frying pan or griddle. Turn when the bottom
is set. You can peek by lifting the corner with a knife.
Remove from pan and place on a wire rack.
PS Same ingredients for soda scones, just no treacle.

To get the best value from these scones, it is important to have cycled 20 miles before eating them.

We had treacle scones today and Dropscone and I did cycle 20 miles before eating them.  We made a change from our usual morning run and went to Waterbeck instead.  (The curious can find the details here.)

Thanks to the industrious work of the pothole gang who have been mending the road over the past couple of weeks, the surface is much improved, with only one section left to do.  Once again, the weather was warm and the wind was hardly significant.  We are going to find it very hard when the present spell of fine weather ends.  By general agreement this has been the best summer for many, many years.  Dropscone moderated his pace to my requirements and we got round in a reasonable time and without doing any damage to my back at all.

When he left, I took my customary walk round the garden.

As well as bees…

A late flowering of the hawkweed attracts a bee

…and butterflies….

…we have also got a million flies in the garden.

Just one of them.

I have had to take back all the rude words that I used about the green and white clematis as it is looking better and better every day.

After my shower, I had a quick look at the passing birds…

A chaffinch almost overshoots the target.

Ever more sparrows appear. The one on the top left is a new youngster still wanting to be fed.

A siskin on the very top, of the plum tree

..admired the ever more potential plums…

…had another check on the butterflies…

I spotted this one.

This is a red admiral, the first of the year in our garden.  It flew off before I could get a good picture.

..admired some more flowers…

It’s hard to pass this crocosmia without the snapping finger twitching.

A good looking hosta

…and then sat down for lunch with Mrs Tootlepedal, who had returned from another morning’s archaeology fair worn out.   They had been using a magnetometer as well as the resistance measurer at the castle and it all required a lot of laying out of strings and tapes to keep everything clearly mapped.

Sandy had been helping with the archaeology in the morning too and whereas Mrs Tootlepedal returned for another session after lunch, he retired from the field as he suffers from sore feet and came round to see if an expedition of some sort was in order.  Thanks to bad feet and a sore back, we opted for an excursion  by motor car to visit Bewcastle on the English side of the border.

The road to Bewcastle is a treat to drive along as, once over the border, it runs through green and pleasant country along ridges offering pleasant prospects on all sides.

A typical view

As you can see, the skies were still very hazy and the full extent of the views were hidden from us.  I have visited Bewcastle before but it was new to Sandy.  The church bell tower looks as though it has had a bit of trouble.  Perhaps the lightning conductor was put in place too late.

The church has two faces, blank and windowed but is very charming inside with a fine gallery at the rear..

The church stands beside a ruined castle….

Rather dull

…and in the middle of a Roman fort.  Here is Sandy standing on the edge of the fort.

We spent some time watching several swallows (and we think, some house martins too) feeding what must be a very late second brood in the eaves of the church.

They were too quick for me most of the time but once or twice, I almost got lucky.

It is always enjoyable to watch these acrobatic birds in flight.

We left Bewcastle and headed further south along a road new to both me and Sandy.  It turned out to have even better views.  The picture below gives just a taste.  You can see the hills round Langholm on the horizon.

In a rather annoying way, the weather magically cleared up as we drove home and we would have been able to take much better pictures if we had been an hour later…but such is life.

We drove as far as Lanercost Priory and as we had taken enough pictures by then, we didn’t stop and made our way home by main roads.  It was a very satisfactory tour and I intend to take Mrs Tootlepedal and Jean on it soon.  (Good teas can be had at Lanercost Priory tea rooms.)

In the evening, Mrs Tootlepedal and I were entertained to a slap up meal at the Douglas Hotel by my brother Andrew who was in the vicinity, having had a couple of days rushing up hills in the Lake District.  He is an equally energetic and generous chap.  I will be able to put some pictures from his adventures onto the blog as soon as he gets home and sorts them out.

The flying bird of the day is one for flying sparrow fanciers.