Slow and steady

Today’s guest picture comes from our son Tony. East Wemyss has its own special path to the sun.

We had another dry and chilly day here today. It was above freezing all day but only just, so the icy patches were still a peril for the unwary walker. After breakfast I stayed in and pedalled steadily to nowhere on my bike in the garage.

Although I only cycled for about 55 minutes, the process took up most of the morning. Time is spent getting trying to get motivated to do something as essentially boring as cycling to nowhere. Then there is the cycling itself, which is quite boring. Then there is a shower and afterwards sitting around drinking coffee while complaining about how boring the cycling was. I enjoyed it. You can make indoor training more fun with fancy trainers, computers and power meters and screens and then you can pretend to be cycling up Mont Ventoux instead of just staring at the wall. This costs more money than I am prepared to spend though, so staring at the wall it is. I do listen to jazz on my headphones, which dulls the pain.

I did find a moment or two to look as birds as well.

The new peanut butter feeder is getting quite popular with both blue tits…

…and coal tits.

There was quite a lot of decorative posing for the camera today.

And there was a modest but steady stream of chaffinches trying to picked as flying bird of the day.

There was even a dunnock at the seed feeder, an unusual sight as they are more often to be found picking up seed underneath the feeder.

After lunch, I went for a walk. I settled for a dull but generally ice free stroll up the Wauchope road again. Although this was rather a dull choice, it was undoubtedly quite relaxing to be able to stride out without having to look at where I was putting my feet every step of the way.

It also gave me a chance to look around as I went.

The Auld Stane Brig still has its parapets covered in snow….

…and the fence post at the far end still has its little lichen garden on top, with some frozen water droplets to go with it.

I found myself an object of curiosity for a cow.

Where there is a wood or a wall beside the road, there is always something to see but I was a bit baffled when I saw catkins and cones on the same tree. A closer look showed me that a larch and an alder had got their branches intertwined.

I passed the fence post where Boris Johnson keeps his spare hairpiece….

…and further on, an interesting lichen and a pretty seedhead caught my eye.

Across the field from the road, the dilapidated cottage is getting more dilapidated every time that I look.

My walk had been under grey skies but by the time that I had gone about three miles, the sky lightened up…

…and today I got my walk in without any threat of snow.

I was going to take the road up the hill from Wauchope Schoolhouse in pursuit of a view, but it was quite icy so I settled for a view-less walk six mile in the valley bottom and turned for home. It was a bank holiday today so traffic was very light and I had a peaceful walk back to Langholm.

On my way I stopped to admire a tree that has seen better days…

…and a buzzard that settled in a tree after greeting my approach with alarm.

I was too low in the valley to catch the sun when it came out but I enjoyed its golden light on the trees.

I got home to find that stringent new restrictions have been put in place in Scotland as a response to a rapid rise in Covid infections so any hopes of getting out and about a bit further afield have had to be put on hold for a month or two.

After a cup of tea, I went out to the chemist and the Co-op for some necessary supplies and then settled down to discuss the situation with Mrs Tootlepedal and my brother and sisters through the medium of Zoom. We are all resigned to the new limits which is just as well, as there is no alternative.

The Christmas chicken made a welcome re-appearance from the freezer in the form of a mild chicken curry which I made for our tea.

According to the forecast, we are in for another week of freezing or near freezing weather before a bit more warmth next weekend so I could not have chosen a worse time to lose my Yaktrax. My new pair should arrive just in time for the end of the freeze.

The flying bid of the day is a rather surprised looking chaffinch.