Gales, what gales?

Today’s guest picture comes from my sister Mary’s visit to Regents Park this week on her way to play tennis. Another circular feature caught her eye. It is Triton blowing a conch shell while being supported by mermaids.

The forecast for today was horrendous with heavy rain and fifty miles an hour winds but the wind must have decided to blow somewhere else and the rain was half hearted bar one vigorous but brief squall. We had a damp but fairly quiet day.

What the forecast did get right was an improvement of the weather in the afternoon.

As I was feeling a bit tired for some reason, I was very happy to idle away the morning with nothing more exciting on the menu than a crossword, coffee and a visit to the co-op. The shopping visit at least gave us an excuse to get the car into action. It has hardly been used lately so we were quite relieved when it took us smoothly and safely down to the shop and back.

After lunch, I continued my professional grade relaxing by watching another great day in the Giro with Mrs Tootlepedal. With no one team dominant, the stage is now set for a nail biting finale tomorrow.

There had hardly been a bird to see whenever I looked out of the window so after the stage finished, I put on my walking shoes and went to see if I could find a bird at the river.

There was a gull.

After this promising start, I walked up the Kirk Wynd to Whita Well to see if there was anything else interesting to look at.

As I went up the Wynd, I was impressed by a plant wall of rosebay willowherb….

…and when I got to the gate onto the open hill, the stone wall offered an encyclopedia of moss and lichen.

I took a selection.

Going on to the hill, I passed gorse and more surprisingly, bramble flowers as well…

…and found fungus at my feet.

It was gloomy but dry, and the wind was very light as I looked back down over the town…

…so I walked along the contour of the hill to the Newcastleton road, passing some wintery looking bare trees on my way.

There was plenty of water running through the culvert under the road when I got to it…

…and the view to the north summed up the day.

However, in spite of the general greyness of things, it was a good day for a walk and as I strolled down the road through neatly trimmed beech hedges…

…I was very pleased to be out and stretching my legs.

I passed a cloud of grass beside the road….

…and two sorts of non standard sheep…

…a fine crop of rose hips….

…and a ring of spruces surrounding a mass of golden larches.

Things got more colourful as I got nearer to the bottom of the hill.

…and even the road itself was worth a look.

The best colour of the walk came from bramble leaves and larch branches at the bottom of the road.

I finished my walk by crossing the Sawmill Brig and walking up the Lodge Walks…

…where I stopped for a good chat with the couple coming in the opposite direction.

The Lodge itself was looking very peaceful on what was supposed to have been a very windy day…

…and I crossed the Duchess Bridge and walked home in a very contented state of mind.

While I had been out, Mrs Tootlepedal had been busy and another slab had been shifted and settled in the drive.

I hope that this is not going to be like the windmills, with work only going on when I am not there.

I just had time to take a token couple of flower pictures…

..before the light faded too much for photography.

We went in for a cup of tea and the final slices of the date and raisin tea bread.

It will be darker earlier in the day from tomorrow as the clocks go back tonight, and with even less to write about and photograph as the days get shorter, we may have passed peak blogging for the year. I commend the patience of loyal readers who have had to put up with me doing basically the same thing every day since lockdown started 7 months ago. I hope that the birds come back to the feeder so that I and you will have something to look at. It doesn’t look as though life is going to change much for the next few months at least.

No flying bird today, so a dipper dipping is the dipping bird of the day instead.