In the absence of any guest pictures, I am repairing an omission for which I was rebuked by a reader after my Common Riding post. This is a shot of the Chinook helicopter which flew low over the town to check what was going on in the middle of the proceedings yesterday .
Life was at a rather slower tempo today after the excitements of the Common Riding but we didn’t entirely waste a day of pleasant sunshine.
I started off by going to the monthly producers’ market in the Buccleuch Centre and stocking up with fish, meat, cheese and honey. I was surprised to get the honey as I thought that our local beekeeper and her bees might have been struggling in the recent poor weather but she had plenty of fresh stock and was in a cheerful mood.
There had been some tremendously heavy showers of rain as I went to bed last night and I fully expected to see the flowers in the garden battered to the ground this morning. Apart from the David Austin roses and the delphiniums, which were definitely the worse for wear, other flowers were still standing up well.
Next, Mrs Tootlepedal and I went up to Eskdalemuir to collect the pictures from our photographic exhibition at The Hub there. On a sunny day like today, it is hard to distinguish Eskdalemuir from Shangri-La…
…but on a more normal day (when it it raining and the wind is blowing) there is no such difficulty.
We collected the pictures (and the money for several that had been sold) and stopped for a coffee. A group of Harley Davidson riding motor cyclists from Yorkshire on a tour were also having coffee and they allowed me to take a picture of one of their beautifully shiny machines.
As The Hub had already catered for a large party of cyclists on a 300 km Audax ride from Galashiels to Alston and back, they were having a busy morning for a place in the middle of nowhere.
Because it was such a nice day, I persuaded Mrs Tootlepedal that a walk through the woods to Bessie’s Hill forts would be a good idea. I visited this spot with Sandy in spring but Mrs Tootlepedal has never been there. It is one of the sites on the Eskdale Prehistoric Trail.
By a stroke of good fortune, the Forestry Commission had sent someone out very recently to strim the trail through the woods….
…so the going couldn’t have been better.
The short walk through the mossy woods was delightful…
…and the view from the top was as good as ever.
There are two forts and from the surrounding mound of the upper fort you can get a good view of the lower one.
Oddly enough, when you walk onto the summit of the lower fort, which we did, you don’t get any feeling of being above the ramparts and ditches or of the shape of the ground at all.
As well as the forts, there was much else to enjoy on the walk.
Mrs Tootlepedal’s sharp eyes spotted fungi, some quite large and some really tiny as we neared the end of the descent back to the car.
We took a last look back up towards the ramparts of the lower fort…
…and drove quietly home.
After lunch, Mrs Tootlepedal got stuck into the garden and I sieved some more compost, did some shreddding and a little tidying up under the bird feeders as well. The mess that the birds make, especially the siskins who perpetually drop seed onto the ground, is the downside of the pleasure that I get from watching the birds feeding.
I walked round with my camera too.
After that, my legs started complaining so I went inside, leaving Mrs Tootlepedal still working, and enjoyed what I thought was a well earned sit down. Later in the evening, I converted a couple of pounds of our blackcurrants into a few pots of blackcurrant jam. There are a lot left on the bush so if everything goes well, I shall make some blackcurrant jelly next.
All in all, I didn’t get much time to look out of the kitchen window so this was the best flying bird of the day that I could manage.
Tootlepedal's Blog 
That looks like a great place to hike. Those tiny white mushrooms look like they might be pinwheels (Marasmius rotula.)
It’s nice to see the heather. We don’t see much of it growing wild here.
We don’t see as much as we used to round here as it has been subject to disease and changing spring weather.
The poppy is a lovely scarlet. And I would imagine your blackcurrant jam is a spectacular colour as well . . . your mention of it makes me want to run and make some toast to slather it on (except I’d just have the toast part . . . sigh).
Plenty to spare for visitors.
If only this visitor weren’t 6000 km from Langholm! Perhaps some day . . .
Would you believe the lovely pink heather is very similar to a variety we had in the outback? It grew in very dry conditions and flowered in spring. When my daughter was born someone brought me in a lovely bunch of native flowers including pink heather. The conditions are very different in Scotland of course! You did well to photograph those tiny moths. I find that kind very flighty usually and I have yet to capture an image of one. It looked like a lovely walk and as usual your combinations of macro and landscape shots are very interesting.
It wasn’t a great picture of the moth but they are hard to catch when they are flying and hard to see when they have settled so I was pleased to get it at all. I am surprised to find that you have heather in the outback. I would never have guessed.
That very cheeky of the helicopter pilot to spy on you all. The blackcurrant jam sounds delicious.
Beautifully framed flower pictures. Blackcurrant jelly should be delicious.
I know I have said this many times before, but you have many beautiful flowers!
I have to thank Mrs Tootlepedal for them.
The ancient people certainly knew a good place to build a fort or even two forts. I find places like that endlessly fascinating – thank-you for revisiting it.
Ahhh, you have nice weather, and we get great photos to look at! From your landscapes the whole of Scotland looks like Shangri-La.
On a decent day it does.
This looked like a perfectly pleasant follow-up to the excitement of the Common Riding. I hope it’s a good year for the heather.
I have to say, I complain a lot about all our mourning doves, grackles and cowbirds, but they do a bang-up job of keeping things cleaned up under the feeders. There’s rarely a seed gone to waste now. It’s also been a great help since I’ve gone to the no-mess seed. I used to shovel buckets of sunflower shells which I don’t have to do now. That alone is worth the extra $$$’s the no-mess costs!
I use the sunflower hearts too but the siskins are very messy eaters and when it is wet, the dropped seed soon builds up.
The producers market sounds wonderful – all the good things in life under one roof 🙂
I could do with it every week not just once a month (though I would get very fat).
The forts look interesting. I wonder why there were two so close together?
The top one is described as an enclosure so perhaps it was for putting the livestock in when the enemy threatened.