Category: landscape

Walking through History – 3 September 2026

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I met Alex today and we drove over to Loudoun Hill in Ayrshire. After a couple of wrong turnings, we found the path that would take us to the car park that gives access to Loudoun Hill itself. The hill is the remains of a volcanic plug and stands proud over the landscape. We didn’t actually climb the hill today, but maybe on a better day and with frequent stops to take on water and any other liquid sustenance, we could probably make it to the top. On another day and we’d probably get back down again! It’s a conical walk I’m told that should take between an hour and an hour and a half to get to the top. Another day, then!

On our way back down the single-track road that leads to the main Ayr road, I suggested we stop at The Heron for lunch. Scamp and I had been there before and thought it a bit expensive and the clientele, a bit snooty. Today, when two scruffy looking customers came looking for food, I think they didn’t know what had hit them. We both settled on a Croque Monsieur topped with minced bacon, something I’d never seen before, but definitely something to try again.

We drove home via Strathaven (Pronounced Stray-ven) which was undergoing a fair bit or change as most of the local towns are with road works everywhere. I thought I could find the way back through a series of shortcuts, but as usual, the ’shortcuts’ turned out to be ‘long cuts’, but eventually we did find our way home.

I dropped Alex off at his house and we agreed a tentative suggestion of another meet-up in a couple of weeks, but we both knew that it was unlikely to be that easy. However, If you don’t make plans, you’re likely to end up taking one of those shortcuts that become long cuts.

Jamie, I drove in to Glasgow after I left Alex and collected a very large, very heavy box from John Lewis. It contained the bits and pieces that would turn into a ‘Sage Barista Express Impress’ coffee machine. The De’Longhi has served us well, but it’s probably time for a new one. We may need some assistance with the twiddly bits, but I’m sure you can work out what we’re doing wrong. If either you or Hazy have any suggestions, they will be gratefully accepted.

Today’s PoD was a shot looking through the Spirit Of Scotland Monument to Loudoun Hill in the distance.

Tomorrow I’m hoping to collect a bag of coffee

Another warm day – 30 July 2026

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Scamp was taking Shona to have a tooth removed. Rather her than me

I took some time to myself and read a few more chapters of my latest book, The Midnight Train by Matt Haig. Strange book, but I’m only about a quarter way through it. I want to find out where it goes, but am not in a hurry.

When Scamp returned she started a conversation with Jackie and not wishing to earwig, I put on my rain jacket and put three new windscreen wipers on the blue car. What a difference that made. Wish I’d dine it weeks an ago. With that done, I drove up to my favourite photography spot to get some wild sky photos. It was quite cool up on the moors, but I did get a few photos I liked.

I drove home and after I’d been brought up to speed with Jackie’s comings and goings and Murdo’s possible need for a new cataract op Scamp made dinner. Salmon, Potatoes and Corn on the Cob. Very nice, I really enjoyed the salmon slice, Scamp.

Tomorrow I’m booked for my annual checkup and as usual, I’m not really looking forward to it. At least it’s going to be in my usual place and not in the main surgery.

We are hoping the wildfire down near Dunwich burns out soon, or the wind changes direction.

PoD went to a landscape that brightened up my day.

Oh yes, and Shona did get her tooth out without too much trouble.

 

Four days on Skye – 1 July 2026

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Day 1.

As you can see, it was raining when we reached Staffin, but the scenery was amazing, the light, equally good and the Cabin was pure excellence.

The day began with a taxi ride to Cumbersheugh Town Centre then a bus to Broxden, outside Perth to change buses to the Inverness bus. Then the long slog up to Inverness. A fairly comfortable run up all things considered and with us wearing his and her’s headphones we just watched the scenery slide by.

An hour or so in Inverness with enough time to grab a sandwich each and a cup of coffee. Scamp had been there before, but it was a long while since I’d trod the Inverness streets, so I went for a walk round the narrow streets of Inverness. When I returned the old diesel carriages had just pulled into the station and we settled into our seats. It was a single track for most of the journey east to Kyle of Lochalsh, and some lovely scenery. It would certainly have been better without the rain, but we weren’t caring. Eventually we reached Kyle and met Jackie, Jaki and Grian who wasn’t sure at all who these strangers were, but was fairly happy to put up with them for the run back to Skye and Civilisation.

In Skye we were dropped off outside The Cabin. We had had a look in the door about a year ago, when it was still being tidied up, but today it was fully fitted and we were given free rein to go wherever we wanted. What we did most was just sit on the two seater sofa and gaze admiringly out to Staffin Bay. Even in the rain it was elegant and almost unreal. It took me a long time to realise there was underfloor heating and fresh roasted and ground coffee. No expenses spared!

TBC.

 

Another bright, but cold day – 16 November 2025

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The temperature when we woke this morning was 0.4ºc. At least it was still positive!

We both struggled with Wordle, but survived to tell the tale. Other puzzles were not as successful. It must have been the cold temperature that was doing it.

We didn’t actually do much and we certainly didn’t go far. The temperature did rise a bit in the afternoon, but not enough to entice us out, there was even some ice in the bird bath in the back garden. First time this season.

In the afternoon I managed a walk around St Mo’s to get some photos. The cloudscape was very nice, but by 4pm the sun was heading towards the horizon and the colours were changing. My favourite photo was another of the reflection shots I’ve become attached to. This time it was taken with the Sony 10-18mm lens. It’s really an APS-C lens, but it works magnificently on the full frame camera. It became PoD and was a shot looking across the flooded pond to a beautiful skyscape.

One circuit of St Mo’s pond was sufficient for me today, not because it was cold, although it still was, but because I was cooking a stubby short rib for my dinner. Scamp was having salmon. Her’s was cooked in about ten minutes while mine took three hours. Both were deemed lovely, but my short rib was a bit tough. It might have been left in the freezer just too long. I must go back to Muirhead to get another one, soon, and not keep it so long in the freezer this time.

We spoke to Jamie and heard about his plans for the next couple of months. It must be great to be going to warm places while we shiver, even if it’s not for the happiest or reasons. We also heard that he has a leak in roof somewhere. It’s in a place that wasn’t updated in his previous work. Thankfully he says it doesn’t look too serious.

Scamp and Shona are booked for on a one-day trip up north tomorrow. I hope the weather is kind to them. I might be taking some stuff to the skips.

Party Girls – 25 October 2025

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I don’t know what the reason for the weekend romp was, I wasn’t party to that, thankfully.

My job was to get Scamp in to Glasgow and to drop her off at Buchanan Bus station, then I was on my own for the weekend. I accomplished that task fairly easily and the ladies got on their bus for the almost four hour journey to Aberdeen.

I drove home and started to tidy up my room. Of course that never lasted. I read a fairly substantial part of ‘Clown Town’, Mick Herron’s latest ‘Slow Horses’ book. By the time I put it down about half finished, I understood less than I knew when I started. It’s a bit too padded out for my liking.

PoD turned out to be a photo taken from my room window. The Campsie Fells looking splendid in the late afternoon light.

Tomorrow I may start again at the tidying up … then again I may not!

Looking for plant pots – 25 August 2025

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Out looking for plant pots and came home with a chicken.

We slept last night with just a duvet cover on top of us. Too warm for the actual duvet itself, so the cover provided all the warmth we needed. The weather is due to break in the next few days according to the weather fairies, hopefully that will mean that the weather will return to real Scottish weather. Cold and wet.

Scamp was looking for half a dozen plant pots for the back garden, so we drove to Torwood Garden Centre to source some. A lot of the plant pots we have have suffered in the recent weather. The pots being plastic are easily damaged by bright light. It makes them brittle and it won’t be the first time I’ve picked up a pot and had the bottom fall out of it and be left with just the rim in my hands. Like everything, plastic doesn’t last for ever.

We found exactly the pots Scamp wanted almost right away, so I volunteered to get a trolley because I just knew by the look in her eye that more things would be going into that trolley before the day was through, and I was right. A raspberry bush, pansies, wallflowers some black kale plants, a pot of heather and a chicken. All went into the trolley along with lots of other things.

Once we got them all into places in the boot and the back seat of the car, we went for cup of coffee for me and peppermint tea for Scamp. Then we shared a tipsy cake, tipsy in name only I think because this was a No Alcohol tipsy cake. I’m sure tipsy cakes used to have a distinct whiff of alcohol about them, or maybe I was dreaming.

Drove home via a narrow road just outside Haggs. I wanted to get some photos of the Forth & Clyde canal from one of the locks. I got the shot, but the real interest was a red tractor in a field next to the canal being loaded up with hay bales, presumably for silage. The bloke who was driving the tractor, was also carting the bales onto a low loader with a forklift attachment to the tractor. The light was constantly changing and I duly took around twenty shots from different angles and in different lights. That gave me some photos to turn into a PoD. I was really quite taken with them.

Back home and with the pots, flowers and of course the chicken safely unloaded, it was nearly time for Kirsty’s dance class.

Today was part 4, the final part of the rumba routine. This was the most complicated part so far, but by the end of the hour I was beginning to see how it hung together with parts 1 – 3.

Tomorrow I have a phone consultation with a doctor from the health centre to see how I’m getting on with my two lots of iron tablets.

The chicken has been named Crazy Chicken and is 100% ceramic! It lives in the back garden under some bushes.

First F1 GP of the year – 16 March 2025

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We just had to watch it.

We’d recorded it, and I had avoided looking too carefully at the BBC news on my phone this morning just in case I saw the result before I watched the race. I had to wait Scamp had finished watching Laura Kuenssberg tearing into some politicians. Usually it’s interesting, but really, this isn’t politics, it’s much more important. This is Formula One. The first race of the season!
Yes, I know I’ll suffer for that … later!

Anyway I ate my lunch while the politics thing was on, then I had a couple of hours of entertainment as cars went skidding this way and that. Even the big names were sliding across the Melbourne grass, and that was before the rain came! For once there was fun, frolics and broken cars in F1. Thankfully there were no serious injuries.

With that done, I wrote out a shopping list under Scamp’s dictation and went shopping. I found out where the Paracetamol and the Ibuprofen were kept, they were in a different Tesco. The main Tesco seems to get all the goodies while our skimpy one gets the leftovers. I’ve suspected it for ages, but I prove it to myself today.

Back home with ticks in all my shopping boxes, I prepared my Breast of Lamb for the oven, then with a host of herbs adorning it, I bunged it in the oven at about Gas Mark three and a bit for a couple of hours and went for a walk in St Mo’s. There wasn’t much to see until I was heading home and the sun came out from behind the clouds. That gave me two possible PoDs. The winner was a landscape looking across the pond to two individuals who appeared to be looking for the frogs that had been there last week.

Back home the lamb was halfway through its allotted time, so I gave it a shake and a turn, then it went back into the oven to finish off.

It actually turned out fine. Perhaps a bit overcooked, but it tasted fine. Scamp had a lovely big thick fillet of salmon which also looked good.

Spoke to Jamie and heard that Simonne is labouring under the same symptoms as Scamp. Sore throat, runny nose and an awful cough. I think Scamp felt better after that.

We have no real plans for tomorrow. It depends on how Scamp is feeling. Both of us have been sitting here having a sniffing competition!

Sunny and cold today – 15 January 2025

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A lazy morning for Scamp, and for me a successful hour or so of working out how to put my Gmail accounts into the iPhone. These may be famous last words, but I think I’m getting the hang of the iPhone at last. It’s far more complicated and security conscious than the old SE model I had a hundred years ago!

In the afternoon I took a break from technology and drove Scamp up to the fairly new Westway retail park, in what used to be Wardpark, for lunch with the Witches. A few shops, a Home Bargains, a Halfords and a B&Q. Fantastic.

I wasn’t invited nor did I want to be. Instead I drove up to Fannyside on a beautiful cold day with wall to wall blue sky. I only came, as I said, for a break from fighting with an iPhone that wanted my password every few seconds. I parked at a corner by the side of a field full of sheep (The Girls) and went for a walk, heading north-east for about a mile along the single track road and got a few photos, then retraced my steps, back to the car.

I had two cameras and three lenses with me, so I changed cameras and lenses and walked south-east for another three-quarters of a mile before heading back to the car again with very few shots in the bag. Then I noticed that a few of The Girls were wondering what was going on and coming over for a better look. That’s when I got the PoD. I could drive home quite happily now there was something decent in the bag.

Back home I was just making a cup of tea (herbal tea) when Scamp arrived home from lunch with tales of cakes and coffee bought for just a few quid. Who would have thought you’d get decent coffee and a cake at Home Bargains for less than a fiver?

Scamp made dinner tonight and it was Prawn & Pea Risotto. A lovely combination she makes so well. Washed down with a half a bottle of red. Well, it is ‘Hump’ day. Midweek!

Later we watched The Great Scottish Book Club. Always worth a watch, just to make sure you’re not missing anything worthwhile putting on your ‘watch list’.

Tomorrow the plan is to take the bus to Dunfermline over in Fife for a walk in the park and possibly some lunch.

Broadwood – 7 October 2024

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Out to the docs to get my BP checked.

Just the last of the checks to confirm that my BP had stabilised. Not just one nurse, but two. The sister and a student nurse checked my BP an gave me the all clear. All done in a 15 minute visit and I don’t have to come back until my annual review.

On the way home, I drove up to Tesco and got milk and rolls, just the real essentials today, then back home for lunch and a debrief with Scamp before we booted up and went for a walk around Broadwood Loch.

The weather wasn’t warm, but neither was it cold. Just a hoodie today for both of us, no need for a raincoat. As usual and against the flow of walkers, but with the flow of joggers, we walked round the loch clockwise. Because it had rained during the night, we didn’t risk the forest section. I know it’s been been cleared and drained, but I didn’t fancy going all the way round it only to find out there was a great long section that would be up over our boots in mucky water. Safer to stick to the path. I got some long lens shots of a cormorant stretching its wings out to dry and thought that would make PoD, but it was the first shot I took today looking along the loch to Blackwood and then The Campsies in the far distance that got the accolade of PoD.

I attempted a recipe for Linguine with Smoked Salmon and Spinach, except we didn’t have any Linguine because Scamp doesn’t like it and we didn’t have any Spinach either. There was a requirement for double cream and we had none of that or a hundred other things, but we did have the smoked salmon. The inevitable result was that it tasted awful and went in the bin.
Note to self: Before you start, read the recipe and check the ingredients!

We had pizza for dinner and it was lovely.

Today’s prompt asked for a Passport. I’ve now seen a few variations on Pass the Port with a glass of wine being passed from hand to hand. I tried a version of the British passport, and now that I look at it, it isn’t all that bad. But what I settled on was a pastiche of a passport. A Scottish passport with a bottle of Buckfast, two crossed thistles and an advert for Greggs. I’m sure Alex would approve.

I’m off to the docs again tomorrow. Just getting my money’s worth from the NHS before all their money disappears.

 

Out in the morning and in the afternoon and then again later – 19 August 2024

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Out in the morning to get my blood results. The good news is that I am no longer described as Diabetic. The bad news is that it was only by one point on the scale. I hoped it would be a better result, but I’ll take it and keep eating a healthier diet without sugar. Still, another possible step forward is there removal of Bendroflumethiazide from my daily diet of pills. It’s not a long term removal yet, I’ve another meeting with the Sister next week to check if that reduction is working for me.

Back home I had time for a sandwich. A piece ’n’ tinned salmon to be precise before I was off again to another health centre, this one in Muirhead to get an injection to prevent a virus called Respiratory Syncytial Virus, (RSV to its friends) from getting its hooks into me. Half an hour out of my day seemed a worthwhile offering for a better winter.

Since I was in the wilds of Muirhead, I drove home by the long road with a chance of some photos looking over to the Campsies. Not much to see today, though. Just half a dozen horses in a field on one side of the road and a farmer’s field of just-cut hay or silage on the other. I chose the second option, because I’m not that keen on horses and at least the landscape doesn’t walk away when you’re trying to photograph it.

We had been for ‘messages’ in between Nurse 1 and Nurse 2 and had stopped for petrol on the way home, but the petrol pump didn’t recognise my card, so I had to use my backup one, the one I made myself from an old bus pass and a bit of wire. That’s ok in an emergency, but I really needed to get the proper card fixed.

So when I got home from Nurse 2, I had a shopping list dictated to me and off I went again up to Tesco and the Bank. I tried the faulty card in their machine and it spat it out too, so the nice lady in the bank gave it the once over before telling me I needed a new one. Probably it will get to me some time this year. Until then I can just use the old bus pass with the bit of wire.

I got the ‘messages’ in Tesco and tonight I chopped them up, boiled them with some other stuff we had lying around and made something that didn’t taste too bad and hopefully will make a dinner for our visitors tomorrow.

The PoD was the photo of the landscape. A bit cobbled together, but not so much that you’d notice. Not my best work.

Various plans for tomorrow. Which one we choose is, as usual weather dependent.

Oh yes. I’ve been told to say that I was only joking about making a card from an old bus pass and a bit of wire. It was a pass from school I used!