Category: Driving

Drumpellier – 7 September 2020

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Driving to Drumpellier for a walk in the rain.

Before we get into the driving and the walking and the rain, we had a bunch of apples sitting on work surface in the kitchen and by the watery light they looked very photogenic, so I took a few photos and then a few more at different settings, some hand held and some using a tripod. Knowing I had some shots in the bag I settled down to solve today’s sudoku, an easy Monday one. Scamp was getting itchy feet and wanted to go out driving, that’s what we did.

Scamp was driving today and she wouldn’t tell me where we were going, but it soon became apparent we were heading for Drumpellier out near Coatbridge. In the park it was a lot more relaxed than the last couple of times we’d been there. Loads of spaces in the carpark and very few people out walking. Today was a weekday and it was raining, softly, but it was raining. We walked round the pond, but let’s face it, Coatbridge in the rain isn’t the most photogenic of places. The apples were winning. I didn’t even take the camera out of the bag, that’s how dull and uninteresting it was.

Scamp drove us back home again and even managed to reverse park. She now rates the Micra much better than the Juke but not as good as her own red Micra. I totally understand and am pleased that she feels she could drive the new Blue Micra without getting stressed.

After lunch I checked the photos of the apples and discovered the highlights were blown out. Nothing I did with Lightroom made them any better. I just had to re-shoot.

Finally I started making the dinner and shooting the apples again in what was left of the daylight. I think the finished article has better exposure than the ones from the morning, but the composition of them was better. Not to worry, it’s done and posted.

Scamp gave me a tutorial today on making apple crumble (with our apples) from scratch, using a mix of 3oz plain flour to 2oz butter to 1oz porridge oats plus a dessert spoon of brown sugar. I peeled and chopped the apples and added some frozen red berries and topped it off with my crumble mix. Baked at gas 6 for thirty minutes(ish!). It worked! I was amazed.

Tomorrow no real plans although it looks like the weather will be much like today.

Down the green – 6 September 2020

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Drove to The Green today, just for a walk.

Drove down to Glasgow Green for a walk in the sunshine. Watched a group of folk practising Hurling or it might have been Shinty, I’m not sure about the the difference between them other than that in one of them the purpose is to maim the opposition and in the other it’s to kill them. Anyway, a crack with one of those sticks would certainly put your lights out for a wee while. A bunch of nutters were gathering to protest about having to wear masks and claiming that this whole Covid thing is just political propaganda. As someone has recently said, “… do they really think that 194 nations have banded together to lie about a pandemic?” Perhaps some of the Hurling/Shinty players could have come over and knocked some sense into them.

Drove home and had lunch. Did a bit of gentle pruning of the rambling rose that divides us from Angela next door. She says she likes the flowers from the rose, even though it gets tangled up in her washing. It badly needed pruning, so that’s what it got today, pruned badly. Fed the chilli plants on the window sills as a few of them are now bearing fruit and need the extra energy from old tomato fertiliser. They don’t seem to mind that it’s about five years past it’s ‘sell by’ date. Just to be sure I fed the remaining leeks and kale in the raised bed and the two, or is it three carrots too. I’ve got a few more in plug trays and think I may just plant them in the now unused Tattie Bag. It might just save them from the carrot fly.  I should add a correction from yesterday’s blog.  The potatoes we planted were Charlottes, not Jersey Royals as reported!

Wasn’t feeling too great because I’d been overindulging eating far too much yesterday, but was considering going cycling because it was such a beautiful day. However I had to give up that idea. Let’s just say I’m much lighter now than I was and as a result had to give up on my idea of a steak for dinner. It ended up being a veg omelette instead. Far better for you I’m told.

Spoke to JIC in the evening and made some plans with him. PoD turned out to be a shot of a single scull on the Clyde taken from the suspension bridge this morning.

That was about it for the day. Tomorrow it looks like rain all day and we have no plans.

Going Solo – 5 September 2020

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No co-pilot, no radio operator. Flying solo.

Scamp suggested I go out for a walk along the Luggie today while she went to Tesco. It was her turn to cook and we’d discussed her short list. It seemed like a plan.

Before we went our separate ways in separate cars, we emptied our ‘Tattie Bag’ which we’d planted with three carefully selected Jersey Royals or something that looked like them away back in early May. Not seed potatoes, just some ordinary potatoes that had been chitting on the window ledge in the toilet. We actually got better results than we’ve had with ‘real’ seed potatoes. A nice big bowl full of them. Only one scabby one. I’d consider that a success.

Scamp drove off and I followed suit a few minutes later. Found out a few more things about Blue, like where to find the ‘destinations’ I’d programmed into the satnav. Took a dozen or so photos of the railway bridge over the Luggie from one side and 42 photos of it from the other side. I was intending to create two panoramas from them in an old piece of software I’d found the other day. Surprisingly it handled both sets of images well, although it struggled with the larger of the two. Not surprisingly the finished article weighed in at just under 2GB. That’s a lot of GB. The larger one became PoD.

Scamp’s dinner was Tuna Pasta with Beans (and chilli flakes). Possibly a touch too much chilli flakes, but it tasted very good indeed. I think we were both thankful for the half price trifle she’d bought for dessert!

Apparently NLC in their wisdom have granted permission for an outdoor funfair in Cumbersheugh in these Covid-19 times. What else would you do when Lanarkshire is about to have sanctions imposed to control an increase in infections than encourage crowds of people to attend a funfair? I suppose the council will have been paid royally by the promoters.

Tomorrow we may go for a socially responsible walk down Glasgow Green.

DML – 4 September 2020

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As is traditional, Blue had to visit DML within the first week.

We drove the traditional route too, just to see if Blue (named by Scamp today) was big enough and strong enough for us. The route took us through blue-rinse Callander and up over the Duke’s Pass. It’s a road that has enough tight bends and sneaky climbs to test any car, but thankfully Blue passed with flying colours.

Parking was free today, presumably because of Covid restrictions, but the actual lodge was closed. The place has been called David Marshall Lodge for as long as I can remember, but recently it’s been rebadged “The Lodge”. Allegedly because nobody knew who David Marshall was. If that’s the case, build a statue to the man, place it in a prominent spot and put a plaque there explaining his significance. After all it was named in his honour after he pushed to have the lodge built. It’s in the Queen Elizabeth Forest Park, but I don’t see any of the pinheads deciding to rename that to “The Forest Park” because royalty are falling out of fashion (and falling out with each other). Wait until the slave stories start to come out, then there may be a change of heart.

Following the traditional route, we drove down through Aberfoyle and stopped at The Smiddy near Blair Drummond. I had a burnt burger and Scamp had Mac ’n’ Cheese, both of us had their excellent chips. Shame about the burnt burger. I don’t think that will catch on. Had a look at the lovely looking cuts of meat at the butchery counter and at the expensive groceries in the deli. Neither of us was tempted by anything there, but Scamp bought a carton of milk for more than twice the price Tesco were asking.

Drove home and again were amazed at the 60mpg we were achieving in this tidy little blue car. Not as smooth or as big as the Juke, but big enough for us and it had achieved a pass at the Dukes’s Pass.

PoD went to a view of the river that runs through the park with the waterfall in the background.

Tomorrow is Saturday and we have no plans.

The Red Juke is gone – 3 September 2020

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The Blue Micra is here.

After being fleeced of another bag of money by Nissan Insurance, the papers were emailed to me and we drove to Stirling with hope in our hearts. Said goodbye to Big Red Juke and signed a fist full of documents. Some of them were ‘real’ documents signed with a real pen. Some were ‘tronic documents signed by typing my name into a box on an iPad screen. Actually the whole procedure which took the best part of an hour was fairly painless. We were led out to admire the Blue Micra. I drove it home and then Scamp took it for a spin around Westfield. It’s amazing how technology has moved on in the three years since we got the Juke and utterly astounding the advances since Scamp bought her first car, a Nissan Micra, ten years ago.

We sat and admired it for a while then had lunch. Despite the high winds and the driving rain we just had to go somewhere, anywhere just to get the smell of a new car in our nostrils. We drove to Robroyston at Scamp’s suggestion to get some polishing cloths to clean the screen of the Micra that had been ‘sanitized’. Then we were intending to have a coffee in Costa, but the thought of queueing outside in the rain didn’t endear itself to us, so we just drove home. Still, we’d been out. In a new car.

I took a camera for a walk in St Mo’s just to see if there was anything worth photographing, but there wasn’t, so I came home and took a photo of the new car, well the roof of the car with a wee fly on it. I liked the way the light shining through the trees made patterns on the roof and the wee fly was well placed to be in the sweet spot.

It has been a stressful day and I’m glad it’s over. Tomorrow we can enjoy the car properly and go somewhere a bit more scenic than a queued out Costa at Robroyston. Perhaps, just perhaps, DML all being well. Well, it is a tradition.

Larky in the rain – 2 September 2020

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Just like anywhere else in the rain. Wet.

When we left the house this morning it had been raining and Scamp pointed out the Peace rose with raindrops on it. I took a couple of photos of it, just for the record. Now we’re not so sure it is actually Peace, because that rose has pink edges to the petals and ours doesn’t. We think there’s a possibility it could be At Peace which is a pure yellow rose.

We drove to Larky to pick up Scamp’s new lenses and her new glasses. Glasses are very swish. Bit lenses and patterned legs. She’s not quite settled to them yet, but they will take a little time to get used to. No point in trying to get photos in the dull weather, but at least I had one in the bag.

Back home and after lunch, Scamp went off to get some food for dinner and I started to clear out he car. Who knew we had accumulated so much stuff in three years. Bags full of bags, cups sunglasses, wooly hats and gloves. You name it, we had it. We even had two tripods in the boot as well as two walking poles and a big umbrella. It took three trips to collect it all. I even hoovered the boot top, that’s how tidy I was today.

After dinner which was house favourite Fish Fingers, Egg and Spaghetti, Scamp suggested I should print off the insurance documents just in case they were needed tomorrow. I’d printed of the first three pages and was just reading the actual certificate when I noticed the Reg was wrong. Instead of SG, it read XG. We’re both sure I read the reg out correctly to the insurance bloke on the phone, so whether it was a bad line, a misheard ’S’ for an ‘X’ or whether at his end it was a typo with ’S’ and ‘X’ being next to one another on the keyboard we’ll never know. It was too late to phone the insurers, so I’ll have to make the call in the morning to get things sorted or else we’ll have to put off picking up the new car until Friday. I don’t think that will happen, I’m sure mistakes like this occur every day.

So, I will make no suggestions about what we are doing tomorrow, but we do have a PoD and it’s the Yellow Rose of Cumbersheugh!

Up and out! – 29 August 2020

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Today Scamp was off early to her pal’s caravan in St Andy’s. Posh city. I was nominated driver

There are thing you can believe and trust in, and there’s satnavs. Ours took us through every small village in Fife and missed out none but added in a few small town to even up the score. How in the name of the wee man could this conceivably be the ‘Quickest Route’. An hour and a half to travel 60 miles? Surely that can’t be right. That would mean travelling at approximately 40mph. Any slower and we’d have needed a man (or woman) in front of us waving a red flag. All to go to the posh end of Fife. However, when we got there, the caravan park we were heading for wasn’t quite what I’d expected. This was indeed Posh City. Beautiful views across sandy beaches which, admittedly, did have temperatures just into double digits today. From the panoramic windows of the caravan they look beautiful though.

Stayed a while to see Scamp settled and took the obligatory group photos and then I headed north to Leuchers to see if there were any ‘airies’ to be seen. Leuchers is no longer an official RAF base, but as Lossiemouth is having its runway relaid, Leuchers is now a temporary base to RAF fighters and reconnaissance aircraft. Just as I neared the airfield the call had seemingly gone up and the crew or scanner holding photogs were racing along the side of a farmer’s field to find a space to photograph an aircraft landing. It was definitely military and it was big, which meant it wasn’t a fighter aircraft and therefore I wasn’t interested. Let them run about like ‘maddies’. I’d done my time at that sort of thing and now I’d grown up. At least that’s what I consoled myself with as I headed further north and over the Tay Road Bridge.

I skirted the city itself and stopped to grab a shot of the “Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay!” as McGonagall described it. It was indeed ’silvery’ today. Back on the road I stopped at Perth for coffee beans of the Cuban variety and also some of the Sumatran persuasion before pointing the Red Juke in the direction the satnav suggested which was back north. As it had actually found the caravan site, I trusted it knew where it was going and gave it its head. It did take me on to the south-bound motorway after a few circuitous routes. I can only hope that the Micra’s Tomtom satnav is more sensible in its choice of routes.

Back home I had a slice of pizza to stave off the hunger pangs before I walked down to the shops to buy tonight’s dinner (M&S Chicken Tikka Masala) and the makings of tomorrow’s dinner.  Walked back.  The brilliant blue skies of the morning had gone and were replaced by dirty white clouds.  However it was dry if not all that warm.

PoD was a shot I’d taken this morning before leaving of a Cranefly (Jenny Long Legs in Scotland), beating the Silvery Tay to second place.

Tomorrow I may go looking for brambles while Scamp heads home.

A new member of the club – 11 August 2020

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My pal John joined the retirees club today, so I went to see how he was settling in.

Actually he’s settling in quite well and seems perfectly happy with the prospect of all those workless days stretching out before him. We tackled about old times, friends and colleagues we’ve known. “Some are bad and some are good, some have done the best they could. Some have tried to ease my troubled mind” Lyrics are like a form of modern poetry for the masses. That one was from Tom Paxton.

After an hour or so of walking down memory lane I took my leave and drove home, stopping on the way to see if Currys in Hamilton had the Sony camera I’ve been looking for. They had Canon cameras, lots of them, but little else. Of course, none of them had batteries in them. Either that or the batteries hadn’t been charged this year. Looked at a couple of tablets too, but wasn’t impressed. I was even less impressed with the traffic jam of people trying to get out the retail park. Roadworks. That bane of everyone’s life these days, and this in a 28º heat. Thankfully the air-con took most of the sting out of that. Had a quick look in Hobbycraft at the fort to see if there were any bargains – there weren’t, despite plenty of posters saying there were. Final stop was the ice cream shop in Muirhead for a litre tub of Scottish Tablet ice cream – That’s your fault Hazy for sending the WhatsApp message!!

After dropping off the ice cream, I went for a walk round St Mo’s because I’d nothing in the bag, photo wise today. Got a photo of my dragonfly model from yesterday, still posing for me, but PoD went to a mountaineering snail I saw. Not a lot else was moving in today’s overpowering heat. Humidity was high and the wind was very light, so I left a bit earlier than I’d intended and went home.

Dinner was Chicken Kebabs on a bed of Cauliflower Couscous. Sounds strange, but it tasted great – so did the tablet ice cream.

I enjoyed seeing Teflon John make a grovelling apology to all the pupils whose last week of the holidays he had completely destroyed with his decision to make the posh kids look smarter and the poor kids look stupid.  It didn’t work John.  They stood up to you and you had to back down.  Just shows that people-power does work sometimes.

Tomorrow I’m intending to meet Val for coffee and a wee chat about what’s new in the world of computers! Ah, normal service is being resumed at last.

The test and the result – 8 August 2020

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If, like me, you can’t be bothered about the details of the test and just jump straight to the result, here is the test in that order.

I phoned The Man in Stirling about 4pm and confirmed that we’d like to take the “Power Blue” Nissan Micra, and if the one we’d test driven this morning was available, that would be just fine.  He agreed that the one we’d road tested was available and that the paperwork would be in our hands by Monday.  You’ll note that most of our responses were in the plural.  We both liked the car and when Scamp said, after we’d road tested it: “I like it”, the deal was all but sealed.  After about an hour of driving round Stirling, Scamp and I were happy with the Micra.  Scamp said she felt quite at home with it.  I was happy with it.  Maybe not as powerful as the Juke, but not as heavy on fuel either.  Lots of lovely stuff to play with and at last, a digital speedometer display on a Nissan!  Something I’d really missed when moving from the old Megane to the Juke.  Good sound from the radio courtesy of Bose speakers and less road noise, if a little more engine noise when travelling.  Overall, it’s a car that we can both drive with confidence, and that’s what I was looking for.  Sold!

After our stressful morning we left Stirling to drive to Perth in the Juke. It was a beautiful day for the drive up to Perth but  when we got the Fair City, we found that the carpark was now an online parking carpark run using the Ringo app.  I’d read a few scathing reviews of it and decided it wasn’t for me, so promptly exited and parked across the road in a pay (using coins) carpark.  That was much better.  Maybe Ringo has improved from where it was a year or so ago, but I’ll read a few reviews first. In Perth we had our second coffee in a coffee shop this week, Nero this time just to balance things out, then while Scamp went looking for trousers in M&S, I went to get some much needed coffee beans in The Bean Shop.  Nearly maxed out the £45 ‘touch’ card limit just managing to sneak under the line.  I felt it was needed because I’d been reduced to drinking decaf coffee for a few days.  Actually ‘good’ decaf isn’t all that bad.  Perfectly drinkable and it doesn’t give you that  ‘Buzzzz’.  Bad decaf is just awful.  “Death before Decaf.”  Never a truer word spoken, Hazy!  Scamp didn’t find the trousers she was looking for and I thought I’d get my hands on the Sony camera I’d been searching for, but the bloke in the camera shop only had one which was 1p away from £1000.  I said “No Thanks”.  He didn’t look all that interested and didn’t even try to interest me in the purchase.  Perhaps it’s getting near the end of the line for small independent shops.

Drove home through the same beautiful countryside under the same beautiful blue skies.  Back home, Scamp wanted to work in the garden.  I went for a walk in St Mo’s.  Lovely big blue dragonfly flying over the small pond, but not resting on anything.  Gave up on it.  Nothing else really interesting, so came home.  PoD turned out to be a pic on my phone taken in Perth outside a toy shop.  Good to see a bit of Covid-19 humour.  Dinner tonight was a salad which we ate outside in the sunshine.  Chicken and Prawn Salad.  All washed down with a glass for white.  What’s not to like.

So, the car problem looks as if it’s on the way to being solved and the sun was shining all day today.  It’s been a good day.  Let’s hope that’s a sign for  the future, for everyone.

 

 

 

Where did the day go? – 5 August 2020

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It didn’t help getting up just before 11am.

After a cup of espresso to wake me up, I went out to clean the remnants of a six month old parking ticket from the Juke’s windscreen. Then there was some residue from electrical tape that was still showing on a door pillar. Sweetie wrappers stuck down the side of the seat were the next target for me and my Dyson. Finally there were the dust and debris in the inaccessible places under the seat and stuck fast between the seat back and the cushion, but the long nose of the Dyson proved that there was no place to hide. It looked much better when I was finished and as a bonus, I found a charging cable and a plug-in charger I’d lost months ago!

After lunch we drove through the rain to Stirling to see what the man would say about our now (almost) sparkling Juke and how much he’d want something to replace it. We arrived too early but the man was busy talking to other hopefuls. He apologised and we waited some more. My unspoken limit was 30 minutes, then we’d drive home and he’d lose a sale. Scamp’s unspoken limit was the same 30 minutes. With literally minutes to spare he finished with his two customers and he escorted us to his table, complete with the mandatory clear acrylic screen. We had a look and a seat in the new Juke. Neither of us were all that impressed. It was much bigger and clumsier looking than the Red Juke. The Micra was much smaller by comparison and the seat seemed much lower too. Finally we got round to the numbers. It wasn’t as bad as I’d anticipated. We were all singing from the same hymn sheet and the bottom line was a bit better than what we’d feared. In fact, the top of the line Micra was quite well appointed for a fair price. The Juke we looked at was above our spending limit. It’s not that we couldn’t afford it as much as we didn’t want to. I don’t think we need such a big car now.

We left with smiles on our faces, lots to investigate and talk about an a box of posh chocolates for taking part. We’ve to phone on Friday to arrange a test drive in a Micra. I’ve already driven one and liked it, although it was an automatic. Scamp has had a quick spin round the factories in the driving seat too. We both quite liked it.

Drove home through the usual 5pm traffic and sat down to look at the details of what we were about to commit to. Looked at the clock and it was 7pm! Where did the day go? Dinner was pasta and tomato sauce (with meatballs for me). More talking about money and cars afterwards and then we raided those posh, Lindt chocolates. Took today’s PoD in the fading light in the garden. It’s rain on a pea leaf. Peas are looking very good this year. May pick some at the weekend. While Scamp watched a documentary, I processed and posted the PoD. More talking after that and finally got round to writing this blog just before midnight.

Tomorrow we’re booked for coffee in Costa with Isobel. Hoping to go and look at a camera in Glasgow in the afternoon. It’s looking like a better day tomorrow. Today was dry in the morning and wet in the afternoon.