Category: Light

Another early one – 28 October 2021

Posted on by Zogman

Taking the wee red car to get its yearly checkup. Always a case for heart in the mouth.

Drove down to the garage and waited. It was supposed to open at 9am, and although one of the mechanics appeared, it was still locked up. Eventually we left the car key with him and just at that moment someone arrived with the key to the garage, so we headed off home for breakfast, stopping at Tesco on the way for milk and bread. Unfortunately it was still before 10am so the other essential (alcoholic beverages) weren’t available.

A while after breakfast I eventually decided that it was dry enough to risk a walk in St Mo’s to get some photos. If the day brightened up later I’d get some more, but that looked unlikely to say the least. I did get some photos, but none of them were really contenders for the PoD.

Came home and we had lunch. Finished today’s Sudoku and started investigating the possibility of getting my phone to get itself an upgrade. I’d put a dodgy piece of software in it about a year ago that would prevent Samsung doing upgrades every second day. Now that software had disappeared, but its effect was still there. Eventually after consulting with the inter web I found that it hadn’t really gone. It was just hiding deep in the settings. When I too the plunge and switched it off the updates screen lit up. BUT I needed the phone because that was the number I’d given the garage, but once I got the word that the car was ready to pick up, I’d start the installation.

Hazy phoned not long after and she and Scamp had a long discussion about dresses for weddings. You will notice that the ‘wedding’ word is in the plural and it’s no surprise then to discover that the ‘dress’ word is also in its plural form. After the fashionistas had completed their discussion I managed to get involved in the conversation too. We talked for a while about family stuff, just catching up, really. Then my phone rang. The car had passed and been serviced, so was ready to collect. We talked to Hazy for a while longer then said our “cheerios”. Drove to the garage, paid our dues and drove home.

When I was driving back, the sky was definitely clearing from the west. By the time I got home blue sky was visible. I waited for Scamp to return then took my camera for its second walk today in St Mo’s. It was quite warm with beautiful light and I did manage to get a PoD. It was just a little weed that had been washed for days by the torrential rain and all its neighbours had been washed clean at the same time. They really sparkled in the late afternoon sun.

Dinner was Bubble ’n’ Squeak, a long time favourite of mine, but something I haven’t had for years. I even learned to make it myself a long time ago. I may have to relearn it.

The prompt for today asked for ‘Crispy’. I gave them a Crispy Cake. Made with Corn Flakes or Rice Krispies, it fits the bill for me. One of the few cakes Hazy can eat. It mush have been your phone call that put it in my head.

Tomorrow I go to see the health centre vampires who will want to take some of my blood. It’s almost Halloween, so it’s quite fitting.

Driving, Walking and Raining – 12 August 2021

Posted on by Zogman

With a few sunny spells too.

We’ve promised John and Marion that we’ll be at her dad’s funeral tomorrow in High Blantyre at 10am. We were up fairly early today, so we left the house at 9.30am to do a trial run to the crematorium to check out the traffic at about the time we’d leave tomorrow. We arrived almost at 10am, so our intended leaving time of 9.15 tomorrow looked ok.

Instead of coming straight home, Scamp suggested we go to Drumpellier for a walk round the loch. She hasn’t really been out of the house since Monday, so a walk in the park would do her some good, and do me some good too. This is the last week of the school holidays with teachers going back to work today and tomorrow and those lovely children (yes, that was sarcasm!) going back on Monday. There were quite a lot of children making the most of their last few days of freedom accompanied by mums, dads, grans and grandpas, all glad to see them going back to school. Add in the usual pensioners getting in their daily exercise and you can imagine, it was a busy place.

We walked the usual “travelator” circuit for a bit and then took one of the paths into the woods just to get out of the crowds. We walked through the Peace Garden which was looking a bit sorry for itself with long grass, weeds and overgrown bushes. Such a shame that the council doesn’t do more to keep these places tidy. Yes, I know they are strapped for cash, but it isn’t until you work for a council that you see the money that’s wasted every year. I guarantee there are ways the council could redirect some of that wasted money to make these places look better. However, in doing that, they’d be admitting that the money was wasted in the first place, so it’s never going to happen.

We left Drumpellier to the mums, dads, grans and grandpas, plus the weans, of course and headed for Morrisons at The Fort. Just messages today. No time for essentials like gin or whisky, so no fun either. From there it was back home.

After lunch I spoke to Fred on the phone for about an hour and heard his news.

Up until then it had been a fairly pleasant day although the clouds were gathering now. I was just putting my jacket on to go for a walk in St Mo’s when the rain started and it was heavy rain. The shower lasted about half an hour before it dwindled away to just the occasional spits and spots. I took that as a sign that I’d get a second walk of the day. I was walking over to St Mo’s when I saw a woman waking her dog on the footpath through the trees. Once I’d retrieved the Wee Dog from my rucksack and focused I had a chance to get three decent shots. In one of them the woman was standing in a patch of sunlight. That became PoD. A bit of ‘shopping’ to get it from the raw image to the one you see here.

Some recipes are fickle. You make one mistake and the whole thing turns to a tasteless mush, or a bitter inedible mess. Carrot and Lentil Curry isn’t like that. I used the wrong seeds. Should have been fennel and I used cumin. I used double the amount of lentils. I missed out the garlic that should have gone in. I even allowed it to burn dry. However, it turned out really alright! In fact it tasted better than alright and that wasn’t just my description, Scamp agreed. That’s a good standby recipe, one you can work with.

Quick dance practise tonight because I really need to concentrate a lot more on steps and frame and a hundred and one other things. Tina Tango was looking better after some help from dance maestro Scamp.

Tomorrow a funeral in the morning and then the rest of the day will, hopefully, be our own.

Irvine No More – 1 May 2021

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Driving down to Irvine, but not to the seaside, well not right away.

In the morning Scamp was off to the hairdresser. I was just messing about, checking the fennel seeds I’d planted last week and they were shooting up! Then I gave the rosemary in the garden a feed of Miracle Grow. I’d to make up a gallon and I finished off the can by feeding the kale and peas in the raised bed, then sprinkled the rest on random flower pots in the garden.

By the time Scamp returned with her hair carefully coiffed it was time to get ready for Peter’s party. The party was in Irvine and it would take us the best part of an hour to get there. Of course, that would only happen if I stuck to the route the sat nav gave me and didn’t find myself on a slip road leading to a traffic jam caused by road repairs on a bank holiday weekend. After a lengthy delay and failing to avoid potholes, we finally got back on the right road and arrived at Peter and Gillian’s earlier than the other couple who were also in our slot.

The party was a relaxed affair with copious amounts of food, some of which we took home with us as did the other couple. She was fine. She (can’t remember her name) was a cancer nurse who explained what the real truths are about numbers of patients during the pandemic. The number of patients seeking and getting treatment had increased which is in direct contrast to the story the BBC are putting about. But as always with news, good news doesn’t sell newspapers. Or increase ratings, it would seem. He was a bit of a pain. An architect, which set my teeth on edge right away. Architects are always known to the draughtsmen as “… that fuc*ing architect …”. Apparently he was a comic too with lots of really funny stories, well, he thought they were funny anyway. Oh yes and they were always accompanied with funny noises. Oh what fun he was.

Actually the time passed quite quickly and although there was a cold wind blowing, it wasn’t really too bad sitting in the garden under a gazebo. Peter’s story of their night of Prosecco at a hotel on the Royal Mile WAS funny. A hotel with a Prosecco button you could press and a waiter appeared with two glasses of fizz! Now that sounds like fun. Fred gave me a Beer Button for my birthday once, but it didn’t work as well as Peter’s!

I could see Scamp wanting to go for a walk in their garden which was, shall we say, extensive. Gillian didn’t quite explain how far it extended, but they have a sit-on Husqvarna lawnmower to cut the grass. That should give you an idea of the size we’re talking about.

When we left, Stewart and Jane were arriving for the second session of the day. More food, more cakes and more Prosecco would be brought for them too.

When we left, we drove to Irvine harbour for a walk. It was cold and we could see the rain clouds blowing in from the direction of Arran. It was a short walk and Scamp wasn’t shod for the rough paths, so after a few photos, we headed home following directions this time. PoD went to a picture of the harbour with a bloke hurrying home ahead of the coming rain.

I do have a painting done for EDiM it’s two apples. I’ll post it tomorrow. Too late tonight to do that.

Tomorrow we may go for a walk. Day two’s painting will hopefully be Bananas. Do you see a pattern forming? ‘E’ is the hard one!

 

Morning walk at Fannyside – 9 April 2021

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A quick visit to Val than a drive in the country.

I was checking out my Tamron (not my Tampon as my spellchecker thought it was) 70 – 300mm lens on Val’s old Nikon D70. The lens did work, if sporadically. At different times during the five minute test, the focus worked and the anti-shake worked, but only once did they both work together. It looks like it’s not going to be saleable, which is a shame. How it came to this sorry state, I don’t know, but it has and now I can only use it as a manual lens without anti-shake. I think, instead, I’ll just replace it.

I didn’t want to linger at Val’s because I knew he was busy today and also I really shouldn’t have been in his house at all with all the Covid restrictions. So, I made my excuses and left to take a drive up into the country behind Fannyside Loch and parked up by the sheep’s field where only the wind through the trees created any sound. That’s where today’s PoD came from. I was just walking and taking the odd photo when a little spot of sunshine lit up the hill and I grabbed the shot without thinking.

Drove home and had lunch. That’s when we heard the news that the Duke of Edinburgh had died. What should have been the news at midday was extended. In fact it might even have segued into the evening news. It made me wonder how they’d managed to fill the hours with news that had broken only a few hours before. I presume that since the last time the Duke had come home from hospital there had been an unofficial leak about the real state of his health which allows all the news channels to gather all their clips and photos to build these obituaries that they show with such sad faces. Scamp says that she’s sorry for Mrs McQueen because a death of anyone is a great loss to someone. I’d agree with that.

We walked to the shops to get some creme fraiche for tonight’s dinner which was Haddock & Cabbage Risotto. We also got other stuff that wasn’t essential for tonight’s dinner, but did make the pudding better. Ice cream, just in case you were wondering. It was cold walking down to the shops, into the wind, but was almost warm coming home with the wind at our back. Even so there was just a light sprinkling of that fine snow, almost like tiny polystyrene beads. Strangely, when we did find a weather forecast tonight in the midst of all the sad faces of the royal correspondents, there was mention of the white stuff making a reappearance tomorrow or Sunday night.

Apart from my lens test and the walk in the country we didn’t do much today. I don’t think we have any plans for tomorrow, but it looks cold again.

Happy Birthday to me – 8 April 2021

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Today I added another year to my account.

It was a wild day. Gusty winds and occasional blashes of rain. It didn’t look like a good day for a walk, unless I was walking in the house.

Breakfast in bed and then a lazy morning. For the second day this week I got the Sudoku out without having to resort to checking my mistakes on my Sudoku app. Either things are looking up or the Birthday Fairy is looking out for me.

It was a relaxing day. There was little chance to get out and go for a walk. After lunch I did drive down to the shops to get today’s dinner. Tonight we were having an M&S curry which meant that nobody had to cook. I wasn’t going to walk down in a gale and horizontal rain. That’s what I bought a car for. I did come home via St Mo’s hoping to get a PoD, but there was little of interest with such low light. I came home almost empty handed.

While there was very little light for most of the day, later in the afternoon the sun did shine for a while and it lit up a wee bunch of yellow flowers sitting on the kitchen windowsill. That was just enough to give me a subject and the unnamed little yellow flowers became PoD.

Hazy and Neil D had set up a Zoom chat with us and JIC and Sim for 6pm. We had a long chat and a good laugh with them. Good to get everyone together again, just talking as if we were all in the same room. Just as we were bringing the chat to a halt, JIC and Sim disappeared when the battery on Sim’s laptop gave up the ghost. We said goodnight to Hazy and Neil D and closed the connection. Thank goodness for the folk who invented and run Zoom. It’s a terrific lifeline, even in these days of greater hope.

The curry was hot tonight and I was glad I’d opened one of the bottles of beer Jackie had sent me today. Pudding was another M&S offering, an Apple and Bramble Pie served hot with cream. I may need some of my Gaviscon tonight with a buttery tear & share, a creamy curry and a pie with more cream. It was a great day. Thank you all for your organisation, your good wishes and your prezzies. I enjoyed it tremendously.

Funniest card went to Jackie’s “Let’s face it. Even the bin has more chance of going out on your birthday this year!” Very apt as it arrive just after I’d brought the bin in. Did you know today was bin day as well as my birthday, Jackie?

Tomorrow it’s my dad’s saying “Back tae auld claes and purrich.” Back to normal. It looks like the weather will be calmer, but not better.

Baking – 7 April 2021

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Today I was making Cheese & Garlic Tear and Share.

First thing to do today was make the dough.

Kneading, for some reason is good for increasing your step count. I think it’s the constant rhythmic movement of the wrist when kneading the dough that makes the Fitbit think you’re walking, when you’re actually standing on the spot. Ten minutes of kneading for the dough then an hour and a bit of rest for the dough and the baker. That gave me enough time to get the majority of today’s Sudoku done.

By lunchtime it looked as if the dough was about to burst out of its clingfilm covered bowl, but I let it stay there until I’d finished my French Toast or Eggy Bread to some. Scamp was off to meet Veronica and go for a walk with her round Broadwood Loch. I was keeping up my virtual step count with an extra bit of kneading. The next bit was a bit dull. The big ball of dough had to be divided into 24 equal balls and each one was to be filled with some mozzarella. Actually it was quite relaxing once I got into the zone. Packed twelve of my cheese stuffed balls into two round tins, left one to rise and put the other one in the fridge for tomorrow. Baked the tin of doughballs that had now risen and merged together after drizzling them with melted butter, garlic and parsley. This is definitely not a low calorie bread. The bread looked exactly like the picture in the recipe. I was impressed. So was Scamp. The only thing wrong with it was that the cheese I’d so carefully hidden in the balls, had disappeared. Maybe tomorrow’s will be better. Still it was a tasty tear and share. Thanks again JIC and Sim.

Just as it was coming out of the oven, Scamp appeared. I guessed I’d have time for a photo expedition to St Mo’s, so with a newly cleaned sensor and a single lens I went off to seek some subjects. There wasn’t much directional light and you know how much I like Light! I did however find today’s PoD on my weary plod home. It’s a Horse Chestnut bud recognisable by the scar just beneath the smaller buds. Seen from the front it looks like a horses hoof print with little nail holes too. Hence the name Horse Chestnut.

Dinner tonight was fish ’n’ chips. Fish on a Wednesday is a tradition in the house and tonight was no exception. Scamp has cleverly found a way to reduce the smell of the cooking oil, by lighting a scented candle in the kitchen. It works wonders.

We had a quick practise of the three dances we know and without a word of lie, we hardly put a foot wrong.  Why does it all go to pot when we’re dancing in (virtual) class on Sunday?  It must be the pressure of dancing for the teachers and knowing they are watching.

Watched Line of Duty tonight and am still looking for the User’s Manual to explain exactly what is going on!

A parcel seemed to arrive today but seems to have been spirited away. Also spirited away is the Fairy Garden. In my St Mo’s walk today I wondered if it had been vandalised, but no. Every single piece of the garden had disappeared, including the stars hanging from the trees, all the little doors and even the washing had been taken in! All gone back to fairyland I presume.

Must get this blog posted and get to bed. No plans for tomorrow, other than breakfast in bed.

 

 

Welcome to the fairy dell – 30 March 2021

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We have twinkling lights all round the garden. Now it’s a veritable fairy dell.

This morning we were working in the garden. Scamp was doing the directing and I was doing the heavy lifting and the digging. We were moving pots around to make better use of the space we have. One of the Azaleas was travelling out near the back fence to provide some colour until the Buddleia comes into flower. That left more space between the other two azaleas. The space where the plant was moving to was very uneven and it took a bit of spade work to level it off, but that little bit of earth shifting helped provided a more stable bed for it. The place it’s in was once hidden by a metal clothes pole which I cut down last year. This new planting makes good use of a bit of wasted space.

Still on a garden theme, I got my old multi-meter out and checked the voltage of one of the batteries in the solar powered lights that ring the tree. They seemed ok and the solar cell was producing just under a volt, which should have been enough to charge the single 1.2v NiMh battery. I replaced the battery and put it all back together. Weeks ago I bought Scamp some warm white lights to run along the fence. Today I tacked them to the fence with the staple gun. With the electrical work and the landscaping done, we had lunch.

After lunch we walked down and around the boardwalk at Broadwood Loch, then over the dam and back up home. Three goons were flying kites with SNP logos from the path across the dam. That about sums up the SNP it these, its troubled times. Flying a kite indeed!

Later in the afternoon I went for a walk in St Mo’s because I didn’t have many photos from the Broadwood walk, but found very little to interest me. That seems to be a theme these days: “very little to interest me”. I blame the restrictions on movement. I think I’ve photographed every interesting thing in St Mo’s. We need to get out somewhere else. I ended up taking the PoD in the front garden. One of the flowers on our Forsythia bush. It’s the bush where the flowers appear before the leaves.

Interesting microwave curry ready-meal from M&S tonight. Really very tasty. Must look for it cheap again some time.

Watched Line of Duty and am still confused about who did what, when, to whom and why. Are they all lying, and why does this new DCI Davidson sound as if she’s English, pretending she’s Scottish when she is actually Scottish?

It’s all too much for me, but the fairy lights are looking good. Scamp likes them. Tomorrow we may go for a walk somewhere south.

A taste of Japan – 20 March 2021

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Have you ever had one of those days when you wake up feeling that something’s just not right and it follows you all day? I had one of those days today.

Oh dear, milky white sky, but the clouds were low too. The Campsie Fells were covered to about halfway down, but from the cloud line down they were in beautiful sunshine. Very strange indeed.

The clouds seemed to take a long time to lift and disperse, in fact it wasn’t until after lunch that things began to clear and we felt able to go out for a walk, but still that strange feeling irritated me for most of the afternoon. Scamp tried her best to lift it, and eventually a walk round Broadwood Loch and her constant chipping away at it finally broke through and the sun shone. From then on life returned to normal. We walked round the loch, but didn’t venture into the woods because I was pretty sure the path would be flooded and that would be no fun. Instead we walked clockwise against the flow of anticlockwise walkers with their dogs, around the edge of the loch. Then it was up the gentle but continuous climb past the exercise machines and on to the shops.

I suggested to Scamp today that we should perhaps declare Friday and Saturday to be no-cook or easy-cook days. When you’re retired you don’t have weekends. Heavens, many people who are working from home during this pandemic don’t have weekends either. So, to give us something to look forward to and to give the week a structure we should treat dinner at the weekend as a stay-home restaurant meal. Sometimes we should get a take-away delivered or walk over to the food outlets in Condorrat to collect a meal, or like today, we could get an easy-cook meal from M&S. Today’s meal was a Japanese food box with Chicken and Teriyaki sauce, Katsu Chicken Curry, Chicken Miso with noodles and a well named Firecracker Chicken. All served with rice. Sounds complicated, but basically you pierce the film on all the trays and bung the lot into a pre-heated oven for 20mins or thereabouts while you relax with a nice glass of red. Pudding was Bramley apple sponge from the same shop. That worked for me.

Between returning from the shops and cooking this complicated meal, I went over to St Mo’s to see what happens when two tribes go to war, and also to get some photos. Lots of rubber-men and rubber-girls staggering around but nobody seemed to be wearing any warpaint, so I presume:

  1. Peace had been declared.
    Or
  2. The batteries had run out on the ghetto blaster.

Perhaps even both. The woods were silent. The woods I went to were at any rate. Earlier I’d photographed some Flowering Currant bushes (Ribes sanguineum) almost exactly a year after my last Flickr picture of them. I also found some larch pollen buds just opening with a nice bit of side lighting and that was the shot that got PoD.

Altogether, my day was a bit like the weather. It started off cloudy but soon the sun shone and drove the clouds away. Thankfully Scamp has that effect.

Maybe a walk down the Luggie tomorrow. Haven’t been there this year I think!

Ravenscraig Revisited – 17 March 2021

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Yes, we went back to the capital city again.

Picked up Shona and drove to the big stack of aluminium dominoes that was the Ravenscraig Regional Sports Facility, but is now the vaccination centre for North Lanarkshire.

This must be the ugliest building in Scotland. It really does look like a stack of giant metal boxes that have started to fall down. Got parked fairly easily but were amazed at the number of cars there. Although we were just observers, and not actively involved in the process, just looking at the crowds milling around outside the centre controlled by blokes with clipboards, brought me in mind of herding cattle. No social distancing, nobody telling folk where to wait or how long it would take. According to Shona that was a fair description of the process. It was dry today, but I dread to think what it would be like in the rain or what it might have been a couple of weeks ago with snow falling because there didn’t appear to be any shelter. I don’t suppose a giant gym would need shelter, but where people are queueing outside for a vaccination, a bit of shelter would be useful. But then again, this is North Lanarkshire, so normal rules do not apply. With all the foregoing said, we were both surprised when only about half an hour later Shona opened the car door and got in. Drove back to Cumbersheugh for her to go for her messages, then we two drove home for lunch.

I’d taken a few photos of flowers in the front garden before we left, and took some more when we returned, but really needed some more and a walk in St Mo’s, in the sun would possibly fill up the memory card with more useful images. Well, it did provide some, but when I lifted up one of Scamp’s planters with its host of crocuses, I saw the PoD right there. Got the folding table we use in the garden which raised the planter up enough to catch the sun and shot off another group of photos. The one you see here was about the best of the lot. I liked it. I also like the moody one of the snowdrops.

We’d got a phone number for a joiner from one of the neighbours. We’ve been talking about getting the fence between us and Angela next door replaced and Scamp wants it done before the apple trees and roses put on their spring growth. The bloke came later in the afternoon and measured up. Now we have to wait to hear his price.

Fred texted me about a new painting programme Landscape Artist of the Year (Canada). We watched the first episode tonight and it was really quite refreshing. Not as ‘po faced’ as the UK version, but I think our presenters are better than the Canadians. Some wild and woolly takes on a pastoral scene, and some standard paintings too, with lots of ‘interesting’ takes on the scenery in between. Set it to record now.

Tomorrow, Scamp is meeting Veronica for a walk down past Broadwood Stadium. Inspired by tonight’s LAotY(C), I might just paint. Nothing to do with the fact that I saw a girl sitting watercolour painting in St Mo’s this afternoon.  Brave soul!

Pally Rig – 11 March 2021

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The sun was shining when we woke. It seemed a shame to waste it.

So, we didn’t. We got up and had breakfast downstairs. The day had begun. I’d said to Scamp the other day that I thought we might have a walk up at Palacerigg, known to everyone I know as Pally Rig. That became our destination for the day. As soon as we left the house the rain started and the sun disappeared, but we weren’t going to let that deter us. We drove up to the car park which serves as a place for golfers and walkers to leave their cars. Golfers on one side of the car park and walkers on the other.

The park itself looks quite neat and tidy now, but that’s because there are no animals there now. There used to be falcons, wildcats, pigs and goats. Also, unbelievably there were foxes, wolves and bison. Now there are only a few mallards in the pond and a couple of Muskovy Ducks. I felt quite sorry for them all swimming in a mucky pond. This is what happens when you let the witless council take over the running of a profitable country park.

We left the sad little ‘used to be’ animal zoo and walked through the golf course taking care to look left and right when we crossing the playing areas. There were a few golfers out today, but how they managed to play in a westerly gale I don’t know. It couldn’t have been a very comfortable game, but perhaps it was the challenge that spurred them on. We walk further into the wilder areas of the park, away from the manicured grass of the golf course. We’ve lived in Cumbersheugh for over thirty years and neither of us have ever walked these paths. We’ve bemoaned the lack of places to walk in North Lanarkshire, but as Scamp was saying today, it wasn’t until we were (hopefully) nearing the end of Lockdown that we are discovering places like Baron’s Haugh and Palacerigg.

The path had a decent surface to walk on and climbed and descended as it twisted its way through moss covered trees, so we got a fair bit of exercise. Every time we were out in the open the heavens would open. When we were in the shelter of the trees the rain would stop and occasionally there would be the hint of sunshine. We crossed a few bridges over raging torrents and saw a couple of waterfalls that would have looked even more spectacular if the sun had found a way through the trees at that point. However, they were noted for another day. After another mile or so I was convinced we were on the wrong path, but it wasn’t until we saw the main road below us that we realised just how far we’d gone in the wrong direction.

We turned back and I decided we should take a fork in the path that looked from the OS app as if it would take us back by another path. Another mucky path. The previous one had a fair bit of hardcore under our boots and signs of tyre tracks from a quad bike or something like it. The path we were on now was just a beaten track. Later we found another better path climbing back up in the direction we needed to go which was good, because we were now pretty near soaked. There is a Scottish word, ’Drookit’ which means soaked. This is what a drookit Scamp looks like. At the top of this hill, and in pelting rain, I managed to get four shots of the vista below us, looking over in the general direction of Loch Lomond with the Campsie Fells on the right and the Kilpatrick Hills on the left. Above them, and us, were the black clouds that were currently soaking us, helped by a driving west wind.

We passed the model airfield on the right and went left onto what started off as a real road, wide enough for a car or van, but then it degenerated into a series of puddles joined by muddy stretches. It was here we saw two deer that ran ahead of us for a few yards, thought about about jumping the fence into the next field before running on again. Just round the next corner we found a path that took us along to the path to the car park and a chance to get our wet jackets off and sit down for a while in the dry. Back home for lunch four and a half miles of up hill and down dale and all around the trees. Good fun though.

After lunch I took a walk to the shops to get bread and also some flowers for Scamp, because it’s Thursday. The view over Cumbersheugh became the PoD after some work in Lightroom and also in ON1. It’s a bit gloomy, but it is Scotland.

Don’t know what we’re doing tomorrow but more rain is forecast.