An early start

Today’s guest picture is another from our son Tony’s highland holiday. He, Marianne and the dogs visited Gruinard Bay and Ullapool today. If only the weather in the west highlands was always like this, it would be hard to find a more beautiful place to visit.

The weather forecast here for today suggested that if a cyclist wanted to get the best of the weather, an early start would be recommended. There was possible rain later, and it seemed likely that the wind would get up a bit too.

As a result, I leapt lightly out of bed at 6:30 (the leaping may be pardonable literary exaggeration, ‘staggering’ could be more accurate), cooked my porridge, packed couple of bananas into my bicycle bank, waved farewell to Mrs Tootlepedal, and set off at 7:30.

I was about so early that the bulls at the Bloch had not got up, but by the time that I had got a few miles further on, both cows and sheep were active.

I found it slow going into the light wind as I had chosen an undulating start along the Lockerbie road for my trip, so the first twenty miles took me all of two hours and a minute or two more. After that, the wind became more helpful and the undulations much less marked, so I speeded up a little over the next thirty miles.

Rather than give a blow by blow account of the outing, I have arranged the pictures that I took into thematic galleries. I saw bridges. (I usually cross the bridge at Paddockhole when I come to it, but today I passed it by.)

Paddockhole

Cycling under the motorway

An old railway bridge with a rebuilt top to allow for electrification

I saw flowers.

A very striking garden escape in a hedge near Eccelefechan

I think it is an inula

An unknown very low level yellow weed beside the road

A drone fly

Meadowsweet by the old A7

Knapweed among the meadowsweet

Thanks to the undulations, I got some good views on my way to Tundergarth where I stopped at the church. I have added a grand avenue from a bit later in the ride.

I didn’t have enough food with me, so I stopped at a cafe in Gretna, right on the border between Scotland and England and I had a scone and a coffee before the final push home. To keep foreign visitors fully informed, the cafe has two clocks on the wall.

Thanks to my early start, I got home in time for lunch. Mrs Tootlepedal had spent a busy morning in the garden, and there were many little heaps of plants waiting for shredding and composting.

We had a walk round before lunch. Some roses complained that I had missed them out of yesterday’s gallery. (I sneaked a second shot of Special Grandma in because she was looking pretty well perfect today.

There was some good colour about.

I was intending to have a full afternoon of being useful in the garden, but we made the fatal mistake of settling down to watch a moment or two of a hilly stage of the Tour de France. It turned out to be an absolute gripper, and the moment morphed into more than two hours.

We did finally get back out into the garden, where I shredded, composted, mowed and weeded, and Mrs Tootlepedal added some more flowers to our ‘wild’ front lawn and protected a bed from the depredations of the sparrows with some netting.

For any reader who is wondering how our lentil forest is coming on, I took a picture of some fine pods.

Whether the lentils in them will ripen is anyone’s guess.

I filled the feeder and took a moment to check on the birds. It started with sparrows as usual . . .

. . . but siskins and greenfinches joined in.

We had potatoes and turnips from the garden with mince for our evening meal and followed that with a good choir practice at the church. All in all, the day went very well.

The flying bird of the day is a sparrow.

I append a route map of today’s cycle outing. Those with time on their hands can click on the map for further details of the ride. In spite of what the map says, it wasn’t very sunny and it was far from warm when I set out, but it was most enjoyable all the same.