A change in the weather

Today’s guest picture comes from my friend Ada who was walking along the road to Newcastelton when she saw a very unusual bird at rest on the Langholm moor.  It was there as part of the works on maintaining our pylons.

Our run of grey but dry days under a ridge of high pressure came to an end today as low pressure swept in, and we got a grey but very wet morning instead.

Luckily I was in church singing in the choir while the worst of the rain was on, but unluckily by the time that the sun came out in the afternoon, we were on our way to Carlisle to sing with our Carlisle choir so we couldn’t make much use of it.

Mrs Tootlepedal did get a moment or two to do some gardening after the rain stopped but it was still pretty wet…

…though we were very excited by this.

The changeable weather is forecast to bring frost tonight so we may have to wait a bit more until the flower opens.

I didn’t take part in the Great Garden Birdwatch this year as there are too few birds about to make spending an hour looking at not much at all a very attractive use of time.  I know that an absence of birds might as interesting to researchers as a lot of different species but it is not interesting to the onlooker.

After I had made my my mind up not to take part, a few birds appeared just to annoy me.

I haven’t seen a blackbird for a few days but today…

…I saw two…

…and the robin arrived as well.

After another very slow start, a few birds began to trickle down to the feeder around the middle of the day. It was siskin time, with first these two….

…and then two more…

… and finally a competition for perches.

A lone chaffinch tried to get into the action but the siskins were having none of that.

Mrs Tootlepedal’s fake tree is very good value and I often see birds waiting to come to the feeder taking advantage of its nailed on branches.

After lunch, we went off to Carlisle and had a most enjoyable sing with our choir.  Ellen, our musical director, is mixing up new songs to be learned with putting a bit of polish on more familiar tunes so we are getting a good mixture.

Ellen was telling me that she had to wait for two and a half hours in the emergency lane of a busy motorway last week until the breakdown man arrived to help her after a tyre blowout.  As anyone who has had to use the emergency lane of a motorway will know, this is not a happy experience, so we were pleased that she had managed to get down safely this week.

As an iced bun fell into my shopping bag when we stopped for supplies on the way home, a day which had started out looking very miserable, finished pretty well.  Especially as there were three other iced buns in the same packet.

A female siskin appears as the flying bird of the day.

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What fun!

Today’s guest picture is another from Gunta, who sent me this charming photo of snowy plovers resting in horse hoofprints on a beach.

We had a day with plenty of birds about and some dry and occasionally sunny weather…

…which came with the first sign of snow of the year when I looked out of an upstairs window.

As it was our day to go to Edinburgh and the recent timetable changes require us to leave home shortly after coffee, I had no time to explore the snow and stuck to a quick tour of the garden where I saw the winter jasmine and..

…that first daffodil bud that Mrs Tootlepedal had noticed yesterday..

I noticed that there were quite a few blackbirds about too but they were shy and I only just caught this one before it disappeared.

A jackdaw hung about for a bit longer.

By the time that we got to Lockerbie Station, the sky was blue…

…but a pile of snow on the platform bore witness to a heavy shower of sleet earlier in the day…

…and there was plenty more snow to be seen when the train got into the hills.

We had had time to admire the pile of snow on the platform before we left as the train was quarter of an hour late.  However, it bustled up the line and got to Edinburgh only a few minutes behind schedule.

We popped across the road from the station and enjoyed a light lunch in an art gallery cafe and, having lunched, we enjoyed three free exhibitions in the gallery itself.  The best of the the three was of the work of Mary Cameron.  She was quite unknown to us but we really enjoyed her work and felt that we should have known about her earlier.

She had a wonderful range of subjects in the exhibition, including such a harrowing picture of horses after a bull fight that the French government made a postcard of it which it then used in its public campaign to discourage bull fighting in France.

We went back across the station to do a little shopping and catch the bus to Matilda’s.

The station was busy and we watched the London train roll into the platform to pick up passengers for the trip south.

Matilda was in good form and we were joined by her other grandparents and her aunt and cousin for our evening meal.  Alistair cooked a delicious feast, this time a lentil and dahl, and we all tucked in.

After the meal, we caught the bus back to the station.  Knowing the railway comany’s unreliable habits, I had carefully checked that the incoming service from Lockerbie was running and would arrive in time to take us back to Lockerbie.  We were pleased to see it roll into the platform as we got to the station.

To say that we were therefore a bit stunned to see on the departure board that our train south had been cancelled is a bit of an understatement.

It turned out, as far as anyone could tell, that they were going to keep this train to act as the next train two hours later and if we wanted to get to Lockerbie meanwhile, there was a bus waiting outside the station to take us there.

We took the bus.  And arrived at Lockerbie an hour behind schedule which is why this post is hurried, I haven’t answered yesterday’s comments and I am not going to read any posts tonight.  I will try to make up for these omissions tomorrow.

On the plus side, the bus was remarkably smooth and comfortable, the driver competent and cheerful and motorway traffic light, so the actual bus journey, though long, was not too bad at all.

I took a flying goldfinch picture which didn’t come through the editor quite as it should have, but I liked it all the same so it has sneaked in…

…but the official flying bird of the day is this chaffinch.

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Visitors

Today’s guest picture is another of Gunta’s fine bridges.  This one is at Newport.

It was another gloomy morning here with occasional rain.  Even the chaffinch on the feeder seemed to be a bit hunched against the weather.

The rain stopped but it didn’t make this blackbird feel any happier about things.

At one moment, I looked out of the window and thought that the rain had caught fire…

…but it turned out to be the reflection of the Christmas tree, newly decorated by Mrs Tootlepedal.

The morning was full of preparations for a seasonal visit from our granddaughter Matilda and her parents, but I had some time over lunch to look at the birds.

In spite of the fact that the sparrowhawk had passed through the garden earlier in the day, the birds were back in force and the goldfinches were doing a lot of lurking.

There was action on every side when siskins arrived as well.

…and a dunnock could only stand and stare.

Though, when it comes to staring, there was nothing to compare to a passing jackdaw.

I got really excited when there was the tiniest glimpse of sunlight, picking out a chaffinch on Mrs Tootlepedal’s fake tree….

…but it was only a glimpse and it was back to grey when I went out for a short walk in the afternoon while our potential visitors were driving down from Edinburgh.

The berries on the severely cropped shrubs beside the Wauchope are looking amazing.

I walked along the river and when I crossed the Town Bridge, I saw an excellent turn out of gulls at their posts on the Castleholm.

The only gull left in the river was the young gull that I saw before.

I walked across the Sawmill Brig and took the track out towards the High Mill Brig, stopping to gaze at sheep grazing under a bare tree…

…and then to wonder at the sheer variety of lichens growing within a yard or two of each other on the wall beside the track.

To avoid a boggy piece of ground at a gate, I went into the field and looked at the wall from the other side.  There was hardly any life on the side exposed to the elements.

At the end of the track, I had a look up the main road to the north, down which our visitors would come in the course of time.

As I went to cross the Ewes Water, I thought that the sun might have come out again when I saw a patch of yellow, but it was just the topmost twigs on a tree.

Two hundred yards further on, there was a genuine brightening and the trees at the Rugby Club bridge were lit up by actual sun.

They are building a third log cabin at the Whitshiels cafe and are at a stage which reveals clearly the cunning interlocking method of construction.

As I got back to the Sawmill Brig, the sun had already sunk behind more clouds…

…and the light rapidly faded as I walked home across the Jubilee Bridge, my fifth bridge crossing of the day.

It was dark by the time that Matilda, Al and Clare arrived but there was still time for Matilda to enjoy a couple of board games with me before tea.  I was fortunate to come out top at Snakes and Ladders but Matilda comfortably beat me at Ludo so honour was satisfied.

On behalf of Mrs Tootlepedal and myself, I would like to wish all blog readers a happy Christmas and thank them for their continued attention over the year.

The flying bird of the day is a sparrow, an uncommon visitor these days.

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Near the bottom

Today’s guest picture comes from Gunta, a correspondent and fellow blogger who lives in SW Oregon.  Knowing that I like bridges, she has sent me this fine example, one of the most notable bridges in the Pacific Northwest.  It crosses the Rogue River near its mouth.

We are only a day or two away from the shortest day of the year and there was no mistake about that here as the weather varied from quite gloomy to very gloomy.  In two weeks time, things will start to look up again, but it couldn’t have been much darker than it was today.

I was hoping for treacle scones to cheer things up but Dropscone had been sent off by his daughter Susan to do some necessary seasonal shopping  and was unavailable.

I watched the birds instead.

Siskins are messy eaters.  I don’t know how they do it.  Food flies off in every direction.

Birds were flying off in every direction too.

We had mostly siskins and goldfinches again and when chaffinches tried to get a seat at the table, they were given a frosty welcome.

In general, I idled the morning away and eventually cycled round to our new corner shop with a camera in my pocket and hoping to see something interesting at the river side on my way.  Not a bird was to be seen.

Mrs Tootlepedal went off to have a lunch with her ex work colleagues and I contemplated a grey cycle ride while she was away, as it was reasonably warm and the wind was light.

Luckily she rang me up to remind me that my Langholm choir was due to sing carols at the old folks’ lunch at the Day Centre.  That put the kibosh on cycling and left me just enough time for a quick wander round Gaskell’s Walk.

I like to keep an eye on fences and I was impressed by the full head of moss on this concrete post at Pool Corner.

Even in winter, a little valley still has charm.  This is the Becks Burn just before it joins the Wauchope Water.

A bit further on, a burst of red and pale green caught my attention.  The bottom half of the branches on a hawthorn bush were covered in lichen with hardly a haw to be seen and the top half was covered with haws with hardly a scrap of lichen about.  Nature is mysterious in its ways.

Some vandal, trying to be helpful, had put a discarded welly boot over the top of a fence post at the Auld Stane Brig, doubtless thinking that the boot’s owner would come and rescue it.  As this fence post is home to a lovely little lichen garden, I was worried but when I pulled the welly off, I found that the garden had survived.

Indeed, it was looking very healthy…

…but I didn’t put the welly back.

One of the advantages of winter walking is that when the leaves fall off the trees, you can see things better.  I enjoyed the swirling waters of the Wauchope rushing through a rocky ravine below the path.

The silver birches which have sprung up since the conifer plantation along the path was felled have turned a rather rich brown colour.

There was no escaping the fact that it was a gloomy day though, unsuitable for taking pictures and with the clouds firmly clamped on the hills.

The sheep looked up from their grazing as I passed.  We have a good variety of sheep around the town.

As I came down the steps that lead to the park, I noticed that someone had cleared the path that circles the big tree next to the playground.

I thought that this resulted in a rather cinematic image and fully expected to see a beautiful but sad person, pacing slowly round the circle accompanied by mournful mood music.

No such person appeared and I walked on.

Even the trees looked sad today.

When I got home, I saw a blackbird on a neighbour’s roof and a collared dove on a wire.

The only bright spot in the garden itself was some snowberries.

I had just enough time for a bowl of soup before I went off to sing carols.  A good number of choir members had turned out for the occasion and we gave a lusty rendition of several favourite songs and were rewarded with a good round of applause when we finished….or perhaps because we had finished.  Sometimes it is hard to tell.

By the time that I got home, it was too dark to do anything outside so I sat at the computer and put a week of the newspaper index into the Archive Group index and practised my flute, with the computer playing the continuo part, until Mrs Tootlepedal came home from yet another meeting of the proposed moorland buyout group.  They are working very hard on the project.

In the evening, Mike and Alison came round and Alison and I had an enjoyable play.  I wasn’t playing particularly well myself in spite of the earlier practice, but just making music is always a cheerful thing to do.

With Christmas fast approaching, I fear that there is no alternative but to go shopping ourselves tomorrow.  If the weather forecast is right, I might get a short pedal in before we go.

The flying bird of the day is one of the many goldfinches.  In the poor light, this was the best that I could do.

 

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Overcome by doubt

Today’s guest picture is another East Wemyss view from our son Tony.  They don’t don’t just do golden sunshine and handsome canines there, they do purple skies too.

We were intending to catch one of the super duper 5 coach new trains from Lockerbie to Edinburgh today but having checked the early services and found them either late, starting from the wrong station, having only three coaches or cancelled  (or any combination of these), we cracked and decided to stay at home instead.

We might have considered driving the 80 miles to Tweedbank to get a more reliable service from there but the thought of driving home in the dark through the forecast heavy rain didn’t appeal either.

A generally slightly gloomy mood in the Tootlepedal household was not lightened by seeing a cat prowling around the garden chasing our birds so I was pleased to see that a dunnock had survived.  They are often to be found at ground level and are targets for feline predators.

The light wasn’t very good after some heavy overnight rain but a good quantity of siskins found their way to the feeder today.

At times they monopolised the perches.

A blackbird with a bright yellow beak turned up as well.

Rather surprisingly, the skies lightened up a lot and instead of sitting around and having coffee and whingeing, I put a loaf in the bread maker and went for a bicycle ride.  I had given my knee a good twist and bump yesterday while getting up too quickly to answer the phone, so I was anxious to keep it moving today to stop it stiffening up.

It was a bit sore at first but it soon settled down, and it got no worse as I pedalled along.  It did mean that I had to adopt a very low gear for going up hills though and this resulted in a very slow pace.

For once, the wind was reasonably light and while the sun was out, it was a treat to be dawdling through the countryside.

I took this small tribute to the wind turbines and the pylons that make and deliver the electricity to our house that lets me write these posts.

The turbines in the picture above are quite noticeable but they are nothing to a couple of proposed wind farms which are wanting to put 600ft high turbines on top of our small hills.  They may be more efficient but they will overpower our surroundings and we are hoping that they will not get permission.

Turning a little bit to the right after taking the wind farm picture, I managed to get a view of hills with no turbines on them.  If I had gone another degree or two to the right, more turbines would have come into view.

Although my ride started brightly, there were lots of clouds looming up behind the trees…

…and most of my ride was in their shadow, though annoyingly it was one of those days when there always seemed to be a of blue sky where I wasn’t.

When we drove to Lockerbie Station last week, Mrs Tootlepedal remarked that she could see two tower houses within a few hundred yards of each other from the old main road and wondered why they had been built so close to each other.

The two houses only become visible from the same spot when the leaves are off the trees.  I could see them both today.

Robgill Tower: 15 century

Bonshaw Tower: 16th century

Both of the original towers now have more modern houses beside them.

In spite of the light winds, I was far from my cycling peak today and pottered along.  After I had done the first fifteen miles, I spent most of the rest of the ride trying to ride above a continual rumble of complaints from my legs by conducting coruscating imaginary interviews in my head with prominent politicians, after which they all said that they were very sorry and promised to mend their ways.

I stopped from time to time to stretch and have a snack and tried to find something to photograph when I did so.

An open gate and a track down from the road gave me an opportunity to get a good picture of the first bridge across the River Sark.  A few miles to the south, this mighty stream forms the border between England and Scotland.

As I got near Langholm, mist was beginning to form in the fields beside the river…

…and by the time that I got to Skippers Bridge, it had begun to thicken up both to the north…

…and the south.

I managed 33 very slow miles but as they had kept my knee exercised and added a few more miles to my very poor annual total, I was tired but happy when I sank into a chair and had a cup of tea and some parsnip and sweet potato soup for a late lunch.

As Mrs Tootlepedal also made a delicious venison stew for our tea, I ended the day in a much better mood than I started it.  I wasn’t surprised to read in a newspaper this morning that Lockerbie has the worst record of any station in Scotland and the third worst in the whole UK for punctuality and reliability.  I wasn’t surprised either to find that the railway company are accordingly raising the fare to Edinburgh by 5%.

I didn’t have time to watch the birds a lot this morning and it was too dark when I got back so this siskin group will have to do as flying bird of the day.

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Another eponymous day

Today’s guest picture comes from my sister Mary.  She felt that the size and quality of bridges on the blog needed moving up a notch or two.  She was boating on the Thames recently and thought that this one would do the trick.

Having said in a recent post that there were few blackbirds in the garden, the blackbird community set out to prove me wrong.  There were several blackbirds in the garden today and this one made sure that I didn’t overlook the fact.

It was dry and cool and exceedingly gloomy when we got up so that it almost felt as though it was still night time as we ate our breakfast.

In an attempt to lighten the gloom, I checked to see if Sandy was up for a cup of coffee in spite of his bad back.  He was and although he was, like the weather, a bit gloomy when he arrived, which anyone who has suffered from a bad back can well understand, coffee and conversation with the Tootlepedals perked him up a lot and he was smiling cheerfully as he left.

We then addressed ourselves to Christmas matters by addressing a good number of Christmas cards and while Mrs Tootlepedal was finishing the job, I made some leek and potato soup for lunch.

While the soup was cooking, I checked on the birds.  The light had improved enough for me to be able to a picture or two.

A siskin and a goldfinch had spotted something interesting over there.

A male and female chaffinch exercised their wings.

Flying chaffinches were to be seen coming from above….

…the middle…

…and below.

An unsuccessful fly through by a sparrowhawk put paid to any more bird watching and I went and had the soup.

After lunch, Mrs Tootlepedal and I discussed a walk but I felt that my legs were in need of a cycle ride and in the end, we both went out on our bikes but individually and separately.

I settled for some boring miles up and down to Callister and Mrs Tootlepedal chose a more interesting five mile route round Potholm.

The sun was out as I started the ride and things looked quite good as I passed a favourite tree near Bigholms.

When I looked at the wall beside the road, there was even a touch of spring about.

However, by the time that I got to the top of Callister, the blue sky was retreating and clouds were coming up from the south…

…and the light was fading again.

I wanted to get twenty miles in before the light faded entirely so I scurried back down the hill to Langholm and then came back up the road for a couple of miles to make up the distance.

The sun was almost gone as I turned…

…and a light sprinkling of rain added wings to my heels for the last two miles home.

We had a second helping of Mrs Tootlepedal’s fish pie for our tea and then, having had my pedal, it was time for a tootle as the other members of the recorder group arrived for the last play of 2019.  Mrs Tootlepedal left us to it and went off to watch a screening of the Nutcracker Suite at the Buccleuch Centre.

We had a most enjoyable tootle and we are already looking forward to the fist tootle of 2020.  Jenny and Sue who have a 20 mile drive to get home may not be enjoying that so much as it was quite foggy on their way here tonight.  During the day I was on the phone to my brother and he told me that the temperature in Derby hadn’t got above two degrees all day because of winter fog, so we were lucky here.

In spite of the layers of flying chaffinches, a goldfinch is the flying bird of the day because I like its ‘Look mum, no hands!’ attitude.

 

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A breath of fresh air

Today’s guest post is another from one of fellow cyclist Paul’s visits to the Lake District.  It shows Derwent Water looking at its best.

We had a day of sunshine day here, a welcome break in a succession of grey, wet and windy days which is due to resume tomorrow in spades.

We made the best of it.

I did some shopping and paid a modest but welcome income tax refund into the bank before coming home for coffee.

I stopped on the suspension bridge as I cycled over it, looked up river and thought that Langholm is not a bad place to live.

After coffee, I had time to look at a blackbird….

…and enjoy the plumage on a dunnock, looking a bit brighter than usual in the sunshine…

…before driving up to the White Yett with Mrs Tootlepedal to have a walk in the sun.

I stopped on the way up and upset some sheep on a knoll who did not know which way to look when they saw me taking their picture.

Looking back down the hill, I could see that when the spruces were felled in the plantation beside the road, a group of pines were left standing tall.  They glowed.

I was tempted by the beautiful day into taking another panorama.  A click on the picture will give you the wider view.

We parked at the MacDiarmid memorial and walked up the track towards the monument.  We didn’t visit the monument today though, as after a few hundred yards, we turned off to our left and followed the track round the contour of the hill to the Castle Craigs.

The track is used by the cornet and his mounted followers on Common Riding Day and is marked by a couple of cairns along the way.  This is the first of them….

…and this is the second.

The picture above shows one of the downsides of taking photos in low winter sun, the tendency of the photographer to intrude into the picture!

Looking back to the hill on the other side of the road, I liked the sinuous curve of the wall and the clear contrast between the land that is grazed on the left and the land that was used for grouse shooting for many years on the right.  It shows that whatever we are looking at and however beautiful it may be, it is not a natural scene but one that is heavily influenced by the hand of man.

(That intrusive photographer just crept into the scene again.)

As well as the views, there was plenty of interest along the track with moss, lichen and quartz intrusions into the sandstone rock just three of the things that caught my eye.

We puddled along a rather soggy track until we came to the cairn at the Castle Craigs itself.

it is a solidly built piece of stonework designed to hold the town’s standard during the ceremonies on Common Riding Day.  There is a handy bench near it where Mrs Tootlepedal sat for a moment…

…taking in the view across the Tarras Valley.

We were well wrapped up, as in spite of the sunshine, it was not warm in the wind.

We stayed for a while, and then walked back to the car, enjoying the vista of rolling hills at the top of the Ewes Valley….

…and the intentionally rusted Corten steel on the MacDiarmid memorial.  It made a very harmonious picture today.

Looking at the memorial from the other side brought out the intention of the artist, Jake Harvey, that it should be read like a book of the poet’s life and works.

We rolled back down the hill to the town, using gravity to charge the battery of the Zoe as we went.  After the recent dull weather, both Mrs Tootlepedal and I felt spiritually and physically refreshed by our outing.

After lunch, I got well wrapped up and went out again, this time on my bicycle.

I stopped half way up Callister to record a favourite gate….

…and was annoyed to find that that persistent photographer had crept into the frame yet again.  I was also vexed when I had put my camera back in my pocket to find a buzzard flying lazily over my head.  It had gone of course before I could get my camera out again.  When I looked at the photograph on my computer later on, I could see the buzzard perched in plain sight on the top of the second tree from the extreme right of the picture!

When I got to my turning point at the far end of Callister, it was evident that it wasn’t an entirely cloudless day…

…but I wasn’t complaining.

I took a little diversion to Cleuchfoot on my way home and this gave me the opportunity to add to my winter tree collection.

I managed to fit in twenty miles by going through the town and out of the other side for a mile or two and got home before the light had begun to fade.  The thermometer was showing 3.8°C when I arrived back so I was happy to sit down in the warm kitchen and have a cup of tea and a slice of toast with Mrs Tootlepedal.

We were joined by Mike Tinker for a while and when he left, I had time for a shower before my flute pupil Luke arrived.

We are making good progress at the moment and we played a sonata by Godfrey Finger (accompanied by the computer on keyboard).  The computer sets an unyielding tempo which we have to stick to in a military fashion but it is a great deal better than having no accompanist at all.

So it was a day with a tootle and a pedal, which is always good, and since it had a bonus walk with Mrs Tootlepedal in it too, it was definitely a day on the credit side of the great ledger of life.

Another peril of a sunny day in December is the deep shadows cast by the low sun so I have an unilluminated chaffinch as flying bird of the day today.

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