Chancing my luck

Today’s guest picture comes from our friend Mike. He and his wife Alison are visiting family in New Zealand. He sent me this picture to show the sort of thing his son has to put up with in his garden at this at this time of year.

The weather gods welcomed us home with rain overnight and a dull, grey and blustery day when we got up.

We settled back into home life at a very leisurely pace, and it wasn’t until nearly midday that I felt up to cycling down to the Co-op to do a little shopping.

After making some potato soup for lunch, I ventured out into the garden for a look around. It was damp out there . . .

. . . but the first daffodil of the year had appeared to cheer the grey day up.

And there were welcome signs of life in the rose department too.

Apart from the snowdrops and the reliable winter heather, everything else is waiting for a few sunny days.

There are a lot of crocuses about and there should be a really good display if the if the sun ever does appear.

There were no birds at all visiting the feeder so I didn’t waste much time looking out of the window but went upstairs and got my wet weather cycling gear on. A look at the forecast suggested that if I was lucky, several showers would pass just to the north of us and if I chose a sensible route, I might be able to get round in the dry.

I took my electric bike in case I had to hurry home when the rain came, and chose a sensible route.

I passed some cattle enjoying a late lunch on a damp day. . .

. . . and felt a pang of sorrow for the ever more ruined cottage at Blochburnfoot. Soon there will be no roof left at all.

It turned out to be less windy than I had feared and although it wasn’t a day for views at all . . .

. . . I pedalled along cheerfully enough, noting that the rain had nearly refilled the empty pond at Tarcoon . . .

. . . and felt perky enough to extend my circular tour of Canonbie by going farther south than usual before coming back to the village. As it was still dry as I crossed the Esk at Canonbie, instead of going straight home along the river, I went up the hill to Harelaw and took the scenic route home by way of Claygate and the back roads. At least it would have been the scenic route if the clouds hadn’t limited a potentially 40 mile view across the country to the west to a mere couple of miles. Still, neatly clipped beech hedges and the occasional tree look good in any weather.

I crossed the Archer Beck by this bridge . . .

. . . which is a bigger construction than it looks. Sadly, there are so many trees on the banks here, that this was the best I could to show to show it off.

There should be laws against letting trees grow in front of bridges.

I came across some very wet roads as I got nearer to Langholm so my timing had obviously been good and the clouds were on the hills by this time and not over me.

I pedalled back along the waterside when I got to the town, and was pleased to see a pair of oystercatchers looking both this way and that.

The feeder had gone down by the time that I got home but the birds had gone away again, leaving a lone sparrow in the picture.

Mrs Tootlepedal had spent the time while I was in doing useful work in the garden. There will be some shredding to do tomorrow.

In the absence of birds on the feeder, I had a look round the garden and spotted a blackbird sitting on the greenhouse.

A Langholm exile asked me to put some of my biking route maps into posts so that he could remind himself of exactly where I had been. Here is today’s effort. You can see that the last few miles were pretty up and down and I almost certainly wouldn’t have chosen that route if I had been on my push bike with the light running out and rain in the offing.

As it turned out, I was lucky as it started to rain quite hard not long after I got home.

No flying bird of the day at the feeder today, so the job was taken over by a large flock of noisy gulls circling over my head as I cycled along this afternoon.