Over the hill…but not far away

Today’s guest picture, taken by my sister Mary on a lovely day in Brighton recently, shows all that is left of the West Pier.

The sun was shining when I woke up and I had had a good night’s sleep and my hip was a bit eased so my mind turned to cycling. Dropscone was away golfing so I had to make my own mind up about where to go for my morning run.  This was a protracted process as my mind works very slowly.

I finally got on the bike at about half past ten, having woken up at seven o’clock, thus setting new records for footling about instead of getting on with the job.

Once again, the therapeutic effect of rotating wheels, reciprocating pistons (my legs) and the body position required for cycling worked their magic and all my aches and pains faded away as I puffed up the hill and on to the Langholm Moor following the road to Newcastleton.  I had hoped to see a few birds to while away the time while I climbed the 1100 ft to the county boundary but I only saw a couple of bird watchers.

I had to be content with the view.

Looking back from near the summit.

The road surface was good, the traffic minimal (four cars in an hour) and the wind was a cooling breeze so life was good.  I stopped when my eye was caught but a splash of colour by the road.

Mrs Tootlepedal suggests that these may be toadflax.

When I was trying to take a close up of them, I noticed a lone orchid nearby.

Owning to the hot sunshine while I was going uphill and the breeze being against me and just strong enough so that I had to pedal to get up any speed on the five mile downhill section, I took almost exactly an hour to cover the ten miles to Newcastleton.  I stopped in a café there to have a fried egg roll and a cup of coffee to pep me up before I tackled the undulating twenty miles home.

My route home took me through the villages of Rowanburn and Canonbie and then onto the road across the hill past the Bloch Farm down to Wauchope School.  The breeze was now helping and I enjoyed my return to Langholm.

The farmers are all making the most of the good weather to get their grass cut for silage, giving the countryside a strangely manicured look.  This field was at Tarcoon.

The thirty miles passed without any trouble from my joints at all and I was more comfortable by far when I was on the bike than I had been when I was lying in bed trying to make myself get up and go or sitting and having my breakfast.

The curious may find details of the ride by clicking on the map.

When I got home, I wandered round the garden.

Today, the garden was orange:

Lily, hawkweed and two poppies

And yellow:

Ligularia, potentilla, Welsh poppy and mimulus

Not to mention purple:

Primula, clematis and foxglove

Crown Princess Margaretha is still a star and even when the blooms are drooping and have to be held up by the gardener, they are lovely.

The rosa Gallica Complicata produced a flower of simple perfection today.

And finally, a colourful skater in the pond.

After lunch, Mrs Tootlepedal and Granny went off to Gretna on a shopping expedition and I cycled down to the Co-op to do a little food shopping for our evening meal before meeting Sandy for a walk.

We arranged to meet at Pool Corner and I took a couple of pictures there while I waited for him.  This rather rickety looking wall is part of the sluice system which diverts water from the Wauchope into the dam behind our house.

A greenbottle?

I didn’t have to wait long for Sandy and his chest and my legs were in good enough form for us to walk not only round Gaskell’s Walk but Easton’s Walk too.  We snapped away as we went.

A small garden on the parapet of the Auld Stane Bridge

Gaskell’s walk

Stables at the Stubholm

Easton’s Walk

Looking across the Esk

We arrived back just as the ladies returned from shopping and we all enjoyed a well earned cup of tea.

Granny went to sit down, Sandy went home, Mrs Tootlepedal started to cook the tea and I went out to mow the front lawn.

When I had finished mowing and after looking at the general lack of clouds overhead, I set out the lawn sprinkler and turned it on and went indoors to process some photographs of the day.  The sprinkler worked wonders.  Mrs Tootlepedal called through to say that it was raining out of a cloudless sky and although I didn’t believe her, it was soon raining quite heavily out of a very cloudy sky.  We turned the sprinkler off.

The rain didn’t last long and by the time I was ready to go to Carlisle to play with the recorder group, it was a lovely evening again.  Susan didn’t come to the recorder group this week.  We are picking pieces to play at a concert in September, where we have been invited to do a couple of short spots and this always introduces a note of tension into our usually carefree tootling but we enjoyed ourselves nevertheless.

I did find two flying sparrows today but unfortunately they were in the same frame so today’s flying bird is a double header.