Up to a point

Today’s guest picture comes from our daughter Annie. It shows our granddaughter Evie leading me across the hill this afternoon.

The guest picture takes away quite a lot of the tension that I was hoping to build up regarding whether the weather would lighten up in time to let us get out for a walk. As you can see it did, but it wasn’t very promising when we woke up to another grey day with a bit of rain falling.

The rain had stopped by the time that I walked up to the town to do a bit of shopping, and I could see the tops of the hills clearly as I crossed the suspension bridge. By the time that I came back, I could see a positive panoply of celestial cerulean ahead of me.

The garden birds had brightened up too.

Annie very kindly offered to treat us to lunch at the Buccleuch Centre, and as it was a very sunny day by now . . .

. . . she and Evie walked along, while Mrs Tootlepedal and I drove there in our car. This was not from laziness but because we were going to make an excursion up to the White Yett after lunch. We had an excellent meal, piled into the car, drove up the hill to the car park, and admired the view up the valley when we had got out

We made slow but steady progress up the hill from the Macdiarmid Memorial at the bottom to the convenient bench beside the monument at the top.

There was a nippy wind and it was far from warm, and Evie required quite a bit of heroic carrying by her mother. She did decided that the direct route across the grass and heather would be best at one point and took me with her. She did very well as you can see from today’s guest picture, but it wasn’t too long before, “I can do this myself,” turned into, “Are we there yet?”, and we returned to the track and the help of mum.

It was pretty bitter in the wind on the top of the hill as I took a set of pictures from the summit.

Zooming down to the Suspension Bridge and Caroline Street

England under a cloud beyond the shining Solway Firth

Looking up the Esk Valley

Tinnis Hill on the other side of the Tarras Valley Nature Reserve

Langholm tucked in under the hills

The Ewes Valley

In spite of the chill, we were in good spirits, though Evie sensibly had her head well protected from the wind. (Selfie by Annie)

Evie needed no help getting back down the hill and trotted along at a good speed, leaving old people trailing in her wake.

I took a couple of pictures when she paused for breath every now and again.

We cast long shadows

A final view before we got back into the car

Evie, knowing that I like to take pictures of rocks picked up one to show me, and she also spotted some fine lichen on a boulder.

When we got home, we all felt that we had had a fine adventure, and we were quite pleased to be able to sit down and relax after it. Ginger biscuits may have been eaten while relaxing.

Later in the evening, a glance out of the back door showed that it was still a clear day with the moon and Jupiter showing up very brightly.

That might be all the sun that we see while Evie and Annie are with us, so we are glad that we made good use of the afternoon.

The flying bird of the day is a siskin.