A free excursion

Today’s guest picture comes from my brother Andrew. Though this riverside park would normally have been a hive of activity, the 30 degree plus temperatures were keeping most people firmly in the shade today.

It was pretty warm in Langholm too today but at 27°C in mid afternoon it was nowhere near as hot as it was down south. From the north, our son Tony sent us news of seriously heavy rain in Fife, with roads closed by flooding and cars floating around in car parks. All in all, we felt pretty lucky and tried not to complain about the heat too much.

I went out into the garden after breakfast for a wander round while dead heading and taking photos.

There is a lot of white about among the colour, with cosmos…

…poppy…

…water lily…

…and late daisies all chipping in.

Even the butterflies were almost all white today…

…with only one or two peacocks to add colour…

…and no small tortoiseshells or red admirals at all today. This was disappointing on such a warm and sunny day.

There was a bit of colour about though with a new clematis out on the fence…

…and Mrs Tootlepedal’s chilli showing why it is called Bulgarian Carrot.

We had to find some shade for our street coffee morning and we all chose to drink water rather than coffee.

After coffee, we left the heron to keep an eye on the garden…

…while we went off for a drive. Mrs Tootlepedal thought that she would like to see the new wind turbines, so we drove round the 20 mile route that I had cycled a couple of days ago. The roads are narrow so we drove at a very modest speed and this had an interesting effect on our electric car’s battery consumption.

The dashboard monitor suggested that we had a potential range of 183 miles when we set off and after twenty miles when we returned, it still said that we had a potential range of 183 miles so we had got our drive in for nothing as it were. Sceptics might say that this just goes to prove that you can’t believe anything these days, but the fact is that if you go out on a very warm day when battery efficiency is good, drive very slowly and find plenty of good downhill sections where the battery is recharged, then you can get wonderful mileage for no extra input. Sadly, driving at 20mph and free-wheeling slowly down every hill on a main road would not necessarily make you very popular with other road users so this was probably a one off experience.

After this excitement, I went out for a cycle ride while Mrs Tootlepedal mixed a little gardening with sitting down in a cool room.

I was expecting to find it uncomfortably warm but I made a good breeze for myself as I went along and kept pretty cool. If I stopped though, even for a moment, it felt horribly hot so for once I didn’t take any pictures at all on my usual Canonbie run. The lack of stops together with the warm weather and friendly winds meant that I did the 20 miles more quickly than I have done at any time over the past two years. It was a good day for travelling.

I had a quick look at the birds when I got in and saw a redpoll among some of our usual visitors…

…and then it was time for a trip to the shop, a look at some lovely lilies that had come out while I was away cycling…

…and the Wednesday Zoom meeting with my siblings.

I took this picture from an upstairs window just before the meeting…

…to show them the extreme heat of our weather conditions but they were singularly unimpressed. With the heatwave to the south and the floods and storms to the north, once again we have been lucky here in Langholm.

Mrs Tootlepedal’s very tasty casseroled brisket of beef made its third and final appearance for our evening meal, and then I went out for a short three bridges walk in the evening sunshine to try to take a picture or two to make up for the lack of driving or cycling pictures earlier.

I spotted two grey wagtails on the edge of the Esk and managed to get a quick shot of one of them…

…before it wagged its tail and disappeared.

A black headed gull was swimming in the Ewes water at the Kilngreen…

…and there was another grey wagtail as I crossed the Sawmill Brig, but it was in the shade and the light was too poor for a photo.

I had to make do with some late sunlit shots as I walked round the Castleholm to the Jubilee Bridge.

My final picture as the sun dipped in the sky was of these seed heads just before the bridge .

When I got home, Mrs Tootlepedal was doing some late gardening in the slightly cooler conditions.

The forecast is offering us a five degree drop in the temperature for the rest of the week, That will be very welcome.

The birds weren’t very keen on flying around in the heat so this distant redpoll arriving is the best that I could do for a flying bird today.