Category: Trees

Out for a walk – 25 November 2020

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Lovely sunny morning. Too good to waste. Off to walk the canal

Drove to Auchinstarry and walked along the canal passing some folk and avoiding the cyclists. Beautiful light, but low lying cloud on the Campsies to the north. There was very little wind and so the reflections of the trees were almost mirror perfect. Took a fair amount of photos. Even found a bunch of Ragwort looking bright and cheerfully yellow beside the canal and a cow parsley plant still in bloom. Scamp found a wee bunch of white flowers whose name escapes me growing at the side of the path. I’m guessing the vegetation is well sheltered by Bar Hill and the trees that overgrow the canal itself. We had to walk back by the same path from Twechar because our alternative route back by the old railway is still being upgraded. Thankfully fewer cyclists on the way back and only a few joggers. The good light was disappearing too as the clouds merged together.

Back home and after lunch we spoke to Hazy for half an hour and caught up on what’s happening down south. Like JIC she agreed that it’s pretty much life as usual, just a bit duller. We discussed books and she and her mum discussed clothes. It was good to speak to her.

The sun had disappeared when we returned from our walk, but later it started to show its face again, so I put my boots on and went out to investigate the photo opportunities of St Mo’s. They were few and far between and then my camera ran out of film, digital film and I had no spare card, so I had to come home to find I’d missed a call from Val. Scamp was heading off to the shops and I spent a pleasant hour on the phone to Mr Rinaldi, my go-to guru for all things computer. I was intrigued to find that his WD Mycloud NAS had died recently too. I think that settles it. I won’t be throwing any more good money at Western Digital.

Dinner was a delicious plate of Fish Fingers, Egg and Spaghetti. An absolute favourite in the house. Just tasty welcoming food. I had intended to sketch the egg shells for today’s sketch, but it wasn’t happening and I needed to get the PoD into Flickr. A view of the canal from Auchinstarry achieved that little bit of fame. I also needed, still do, to get the blog written and posted. So if you’ll excuse me, I’ll end there and get that done.

If the weather is fine tomorrow we’re going out for a walk. If not we’re not.

Leaves, Friends and Glenmorangie – 16 November 2020

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Too many of our days are spoilt by reading in bed.

Today the light was good, so after breakfast I got up, dressed and took my camera out for a walk. Yesterday, on the way back from our walk I saw a little clearing in the woods beside Broadwood Loch, covered with golden brown sycamore leaves. That was my target for today. When I got there the clouds had already rolled in and it didn’t look as if I was going to get a chance to take the photo. But I was there with a camera and I wasn’t going home until I had at least one shot in the bag, and this time it would be in focus. I got quite a few shots looking in both east and west directions. I walked round the boardwalk after that took a few shots of the padlocks rusting together on the square link fence. No great sky, no directional light. I don’t know if there would really have been any because at about 9.30am the sun wouldn’t have risen much and the area I was in would have been in shadow anyway. That was about it for photography. I really need to put that little battery powered light in my bag to give me some portable directional light.

Back home the shots looked ok. Not great, just ok. The main problem apart from a lack of shadows was the white sky behind the trees. Luminar 4 is a great bit of software for adding interesting skies to bland landscapes and it came to the rescue with today’s PoD.

Time to get ready for lunch. Today we were booked for lunch with Crawford and Nancy at The Cotton House in Longcroft. Lovely lunch and a great laugh with the other pair. My Salt and Chilli Chicken with noodles is fast becoming my go-to standard for Chinese / Thai food. Scamp has gone back to the old favourite of Chicken Chow Mein.

When we came out, Nancy had a Christmas parcel for Scamp (a bit early, but who’s counting) and Crawford presented me with a bottle of Glenmorangie as a belated birthday prezzy. I was flabbergasted. I totally hadn’t expected that. We did elbow bumps and left for our respective homes.

The weather was closing in as we neared Cumbersheugh so we waited a while before walking down to the shops for staples which this time included iced buns, chocolate and pancakes. Only the iced buns and the pancakes have been sampled, the chocolate is hiding in the fridge.

The golden leaves and the subtly added sky finished off the PoD and I was happy with it. Must try out PhotoPills on the iPhone to find out if I can indeed get light onto those trees on Thursday, because tomorrow and Wednesday are definitely out with heavy rain both days.

Doesn’t look like we’ll be going far tomorrow.

Mountaineers – 12 November 2020

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Well, that’s how we felt today.

It was such a beautiful morning, it seemed a shame to waste it just sitting around. I suggested we climb Bar Hill. We had completed the Croy Hill ascent last month and it seemed like a good use of the clear, dry weather.

We parked at The Hebo House and walked up the hill towards Croy, crossed the road and started on the path to Bar Hill. Through two gates and when the road curved to the left we went right, following the John Muir Trail arrows. They took us along a wide grassy area between banks of trees, gently climbing, but we could see ahead of us the climb growing steadily steeper. It was also a lot soggier underfoot and pure mud in places. Scamp wasn’t sure about this part at all, but we found a way through it. We’d brought our walking poles and they helped a lot, giving the security to plant our feet firmly, knowing that the poles would support us.

Once we were past the boggy area, the slope got a lot steeper. I was pretty sure the view from the top would be worth the climb and I was right. Well, I thought it was worth the climb anyway. Scamp was more worried about getting back down, but I didn’t intend to retrace our steps. I was almost sure we could take a gentler way down. That last climb took us to an Iron Age fort of which nothing really remains. There is a trig point and we stopped to take some photos. A hundred yards further on was the ruins of the Roman fort, and then I realised that the gulley that we had kept on our right hand side on the climb was actually the ditch that had contained the earth used to build the ramparts that protected the wall itself.

We walked round the ruins for a while noting what went where and wondering how they managed to dig a well deep enough to find water on the top of a hill. I suppose it’s all to do with water tables and stuff. I vaguely remember being taught about it in geography in school, and that was only a couple of years after the Romans left. Then we headed back down by the “easy” military route which is probably the way the Romans with their horses pulling carts of provisions. It was still fairly steep, but there were ruts cut perpendicular to the direction of the path and these would help with traction, but it must have been slow progress from the level of the valley up to the fort. The ice cream would probably have melted by the time they got to the top.

Just because we could, we took a new path back to the car. Bits of it reminds me of the second day at Cautley Spout in Yorkshire where we were walking on what seemed like a stream bed. This was similar in places with water running off the fields on our left and then being channeled down the path and not across it. It looked treacherous, but was actually quite easy. “Quite easy” because we had walking poles to give us support again. Back at the car we booked a table for lunch tomorrow at The Hebo House. A review will hopefully be posted in due course.

Apart from a quick visit to Tesco for messages that was the excitement over for the day. On the way down the hill the clouds had been gathering and the sunshine less often breaking through. By the time we got home it was gathering gloom and by about four o’ clock it was getting dark.

PoD turned out to be a shot looking down the hill we’d struggled up. In the pic it looks like the fairway of a golf course, but you can see where the ditch is and where the earth has been piled up to form the ramparts.

It was a good idea to go out in the morning. We had the best of the day.

Tomorrow, hopefully we’ll be going for lunch to The Hebo House.

Christmas Prezzies … already – 28 October 2020

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Today we were off to collect some Christmas Prezzies that Scamp had ordered.

I usually complain about the condensing of the year. You know the sort of thing. After the schools go back in August the first Xmas cards start appearing. We’ve hardly got Christmas and New Year out of the way and the Easter Eggs are on the shelves. However, Christmas prezzies in October is just good planning, Scamp says. We found the place, just a normal house in an everyday street where the maker lived. That’s the way things are now. Ideas are seen online. Discussions are done and prices agreed on Messenger. Purchases are made online and items are collected from the maker’s home. I suppose it’s better than using Amazon, and at least we are supporting small businesses, which is a good thing.

With that done we drove up to a retail park in Bishopbriggs. Probably as close as you could get to the diametric opposite of the small business we had just left. I attempted some visual retail therapy in Currys, which was a waste of time because there were so few pieces of tech on the shelves. Another loser to the online market place. The problem with that approach is where to you find someone to advise you on a purchase? Where is there a salesperson you can trust to give you sound advice? The other question you should ask yourself is “Would I buy my item from that salesperson, knowing that I can get a better deal by logging on to Amazon?” It’s the old chicken and egg quandary. Scamp got what she wanted. I got what I deserved. Then we went for coffee in Costa and drove home after using up our allocation of 30 mins.

Soup for lunch, then I went out to St Mo’s to get some photos in the two hour window the weather app said I’d get. The sun almost came out and the Larches shone in the unexpected light. They surprise me every year with their bright yellow needles. I also has that strange vision of snowflakes, walking down the avenue of trees with the yellow needles blowing in the wind and looking just like snow. A branch of a larch with its bright needles still attached and a pinecone too made PoD.

Just before dinner while I was working on the PoD and Scamp was reading, someone knocked on the door. It was the Tesco delivery! We’d completely forgotten about it. Rushed to empty the crates and let the driver get on his way. Dinner was one of Scamp’s specialities, Stir-fry. This was a Chicken Stir-fry with all the fancy veg. Quite delicious.

Sketch of the day was Float. I’d decided about a week ago that today’s drawing centre around a fishing float. It looked a bit dull, just a view of a fishing float from below, so I searched for sort of cartoon drawings of fish and adapted one of them to add to the sketch, then added a few rocks and sand on the bottom of the water. That brightened it up. I’m happy with it.

That was about it for the day. These autumn days are so short now. We really should get up and out early to make the most of them. We watched the first episode of Roadkill. We’re both still undecided about it. We’ve another episode recorded and we may watch it tomorrow. Tomorrow however we are booked for a full day of wind and rain, which seems to happen about every second day just now.

Writing – 8 October 2020

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So much writing today.

This morning I sat down to write to my brother. We communicate by email and send each other what we consider our best photos. It’s roughly an email every two months, but I’ve been especially tardy of late and realised with a bit of a shock that my last epistle was sent on the 25th of July. It being the 8th of October today, that makes it nearly three months. I’d a fair bit to tell him, because a lot has happened at this end in the intervening 75 days. It started with Good Morning Alex, and was finally posted with Good Afternoon Alex. He deserved the time. His photos this time were excellent. Another photog who has moved back to Canon from M43. I must admit that I like the Olympus cameras and the Lumix lenses and the light weight of the cameras. I also like the detailed complexity of the menu system that allows you to change almost every bit of the hardware, but I’ve never liked the 4:3 format. I much prefer the 35mm 3:2 format whether it’s full sensor or APS-C. I just think it looks better. Anyway, I finally posted the email with my contribution of images in the afternoon. I felt better after that.

Having been sitting around all day, I needed to get out and walked down to the shops to get some stuff for tonight’s dinner, but mainly for the walk and maybe a chance to grab some photos. I didn’t get the stuff for the dinner and I didn’t get any photos either until I came home. I saw the light shining through the yellow leaves of the chestnut tree outside our house and took some shots of that, but none of them really worked for me. Instead, while I was making dinner I was putting some fish wrappings in the outside bin where they wouldn’t smell the house and saw one of Scamp’s roses just opening and there was still enough light to grab a shot. That was PoD. The rose is Remember Me and it goes through some amazing colour changes from bud to fully opened.

Dinner was Mediterranean Fish Stew. Another one stolen obtained from JIC and Sim’s recipe book, and another winner. I’d definitely make that again.

Sketch prompt today was “Teeth”. I couldn’t decide what to draw that would reference the subject. Scamp suggested the teeth of a comb. I thought of a saw’s teeth. Eventually I just sat and doodled a face with broken teeth and there was today’s picture right there.

Tomorrow all the pubs and restaurants in Central Scotland will close at 6pm and remain closed until the 25th of October. We may go out somewhere, anywhere tomorrow to have a pre-lockout drink or a lunch.

Old Friends – 6 October 2020

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I’d barely started to clean up my room this morning when Scamp noticed that she had a missed call

Crawford & Nancy had phoned to suggest a meet up today on Clydeside. Beautiful day, far too good to be clearing out cupboards, so we phoned back and said “yes” then were off to Rosebank. We were there first, so we booked a table, collected a buzzer and messaged the other two that we were had arrived and a table was booked. We went for a browse round the tat that always seems to be on offer in these places. Inevitably nothing caught our eye and we soon recognised the other masked pair arriving. Stood talking and getting in everybody’s way for a quarter of an hour or so before our buzzer buzzed and we were shown to our table. Food was good, better than the standard garden centre fare. Scamp had Mac ’n’ Cheese and I had Scampi. Everyone had chips with their meals. For what must be the first time, I had a really decent Americano in a garden centre. Usually it’s a teaspoon of coffee in the portafilter and half a gallon of water. This was real coffee. As good as my coffee, well almost. After the meal we sat and talked for another couple of hours. Eventually we were all talked out and said our goodbyes. I’m really glad Scamp noticed she’d that missed call.

We stopped at Mauldsley on the way home so I could grab some shots of the bridge and the gatehouse, aways a favourite of mine. Unfortunately because of the recent flooding there were a lot of industrial protective barriers up and there was no chance of the shot I wanted from the edge of the river looking up at the bridge and the house, so I had to be content with a shot from just over the bridge looking back at the house. I was shooting into the light which wasn’t ideal, but managed use the foliage of the trees to shield the lens from the worst of the bright sunlight. I spoke to a couple of blokes packing up after fishing. Apparently today was the last day of the trout fishing season and the river wasn’t really ideal with heavy and dirty water, still running off a spate. Drove home and it looked as if we just missed a heavy shower when we were just past Hamilton services, so maybe that fifteen minutes or so at Mauldslie had been a good choice.

Back home the photos looked good enough. Started working out how to interpret today’s prompt of “Rodent”. The rodent I was thinking about was a mouse, or to be more accurate, a bluetooth mouse. After about an hour of work I gave up on it and copied a Mickey Mouse from a piece of cloth I had in my room. That eventually morphed into what you see here. It’s not perfect, but it fits the prompt and that’s all that matters.

That was a really good day. A few hours spent with old friends just shooting the breeze and catching up. Plus, Scampi ’n’ Chips & Mac ’n’ Chips. What’s not to like.

Scamp is booked tomorrow for coffee with Annette. I think I will be continuing the clean up / clear out of the painting room, all being well. We’ll be listening intently to Nick the Chick’s latest proposals for a Circuit Breaker to halt Covid and hoping it has no unwanted implications for travel.

Another bright sunny day – 26 September 2020

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It looks like the end of September is a bit of an Indian summer. Certainly better than this year’s Scottish Summer.

It was too good a day to waste, so we got ourselves kitted out with boots and wet weather gear, just in case, and drove over to Chatelherault (I managed to spell it this time without resorting to Google! Am I not clever!?). There’s a fairly big carpark there and it was already full when we arrived, but I didn’t want to park there anyway. The potholes are decidedly deep an I didn’t want to damage Blue’s delicate substructure. Instead, I chose one of the little carparks and found there were only about five cars parked there. People are so blinkered. They see the main carpark and think it must be better because it’s so busy. It’s not.

Boots and jackets on and with a walking pole each, we strode off towards the Cadzow Oaks. John had introduced me to them a couple of weeks ago and although the biggest one was cordoned off while they do some health checks on it and decide how best to support it, the slightly smaller ones were still magnificent enough to demand I took their photos. Because they are so large and so close to you, it’s difficult to get them all in without using an ultra-wide lens and I hadn’t brought one, choosing instead to travel light. Instead I took about 20 shots and knew I could produce a decent patch together later in the computer. For some reason the camera was over exposing everything and I couldn’t work out why, but, again, I could deal with that later too.

We walked on past the oaks and found a path that was climbing steadily along the side of the ravine that sloped down to the Avon Water. Nobody we spoke too could definitely say where the path led and how long it would take to get back to the visitor centre if we followed it. We decided to go back the way we’d come. Rather than just returning to the centre and inevitably going home, we extended our walk to take in The Duke’s Monument. I’d been there before and found it a forbidding and eerie place. Even today on a sunny afternoon it felt cold and unwelcoming. Coupled with the overexposure of the camera, the shots I took weren’t what I’d intended. I sat down and puzzled it out. On the E-M1 there’s a little lever, near the eyepiece that allows you to meddle with far more settings than are good for you. It was sitting in the ‘Meddle’ position and I’d been twiddling the wheels that should be marked ‘Screw up your settings here’. It was the work of mere minutes to repair the damage, but that didn’t fix the thirty odd photos I’d taken. I set myself a reminder to switch the bloody thing off when I got home, and after we walked the mile or so back to the car and after driving home, that’s what I did. I took great care to turn off that switch. I think that’s what I like about the E-M1. It’s so easy to screw things up, but there’s usually a way to put them right again if you know where to look in the massive menu.

Back home, sitting in the warm living room with the sun shining through the blinds, I had a Guinness and Scamp had a Pimms to quench our thirst after a long walk. Not as long as the walk two Saturdays ago, but with almost as many hills.

PoD was one of the Cadzow Oaks, reputed to be over 800 years old. They were growing when the Crusaders set off on the Fourth Crusade and when Genghis Khan invaded China. If they could speak, what stories they could tell.

Tomorrow we’re hoping for another good sunny day. We may go for another walk.

Cautley Spout revisited – 15 September 2020

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Hoping for better weather

In the morning Scamp read at the house while I tried another sketch, a rough, from a different angle. As sometimes happens, the rough turned out better than I’d expected, and became a shaded pencil sketch. I may have to give up the 20mm long Palomino Blackwing and release it from its pencil extender. It’s worked hard since mid April!

In the afternoon the two hill walkers decided we should revisit Cautley Spout, but attack it from a different angle. It was a much better day than the last time, so we agreed to have a go. Parking was a lot tighter than at our previous visit, but after waiting in the Cross Keys carpark, we managed to grab a space. The Cross Keys is a Temperance Inn where no alcohol is sold, or allowed on the premises. I didn’t know such places still existed.

Today’s walk started in the same direction as the last one, but then made a change of direction, going left over a narrow bridge and on at an angle up the hill with a dry stane dyke on our left side as we climbed gently round the edge of the hill. Great views of the valley below and lots of rustling from beech trees as their leaves were turning more brown than green in the autumn sun.

No rainy coat today, in fact I’d to tie my jersey round my waist and continue on in my shirt sleeves, the weather was so calm and warm. I began to wish I’d changed to shorts instead of jeans. After an hour or so of tramping along a path that started off almost as a stream bed with water running down it. Then through a field of grazing sheep past deep pools of running water where Vixen demonstrated her love of swimming. Eventually though the path started to lose itself to a bog and we decided that after a tangerine each for sustenance, we should call it a day and walk back down.

Further down the path, Vixen had another swim in the bigger stream which is the run off from the waterfall. She was on a long lead and seemed totally at home in the water.

Scamp was cook tonight and Holy Cow Chicken Curry was hotter than we expected it to be. Nice Stone Oven naan bread to soak up the leftover sauce.

A good day. Glad we did the easier of the two walks, but the weather definitely helped.

The Teacher and the Teacher – 9 September 2020

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Out after a quick coffee this morning to meet John.

Drove to Chatelherault to meet John. We were going for a walk in the Chatelherault Estate to talk about cameras, apertures, shutter speeds and the mysteries of ISOs. Things I’ve been using for years and years, but never really had the chance to explain to anyone. Well, that’s not entirely true. I’ve talked about them to lots of folk, but very few of them listened. Even fewer understood a word I said. Someone said of photogs, that they could conduct an entire conversation using just letters and numbers. I’m not sure that’s entirely correct, but there is a semblance of truth in it.

We started off going over the Duke’s Bridge and on past Cadzow Castle which is pretty much a ruin now. It would appear that the restoration has hit a roadblock, judging by the fact that nature has more or less covered the scaffolding that was erected about ten years ago. John took us up to the Cadzow Oaks which are much more impressive than the ruined castle. They are reckoned to be over 800 years old and as someone commented, they look like how you’d imagine Ents to look in The Hobbit. They surround an area of earthworks that may have been the groundwork for a castle that would predate Cadzow Castle and may have been Roman in origin.

Ah, but we weren’t out to do historical stuff, we were there to take photos. The weather was mixed. While we were sitting talking beside the oaks the light was constantly changing, making it difficult to get any decent shots. That’s my excuse anyway. I tried to explain the basics of exposure, using the triangle of Aperture, Shutter speed and ISO. I don’t know if I covered it all that well and I’m sure I didn’t explain it as lucidly as I’d have liked, but it was a decent day, and we were out for a walk. While we were photographing leaves and moss on an old (not oak) log a woman stopped to comment on the shapes the lichen was making. She had a dog with her. A white dog with a face like a lamb. When I got home that’s how I described it to Mr Google and he informed me it was a Bedlington Terrier. We, John and I went for coffee and a cake before we parted company. He was determined to walk home, I was driving.

Got a bit of a fright on the M73 passing a Land Rover which was tootling along doing about 50mph while I was in the outside land doing a neat 70mph. Then the Land Rover started sliding across into my lane. Whoever was driving must have seen me at the last minute and swerved back into their lane as I took evasive action. In my rear view mirror I saw them indicate and fishtail onto the hard shoulder. Glad of the dash cam which caught the incident nicely! The clip is now downloaded just in case.

Dinner tonight was chicken stir fry made by Scamp of course. I don’t do stir fry. I won’t say can’t I can, just not as good as Scamp. After that we watched the final episode of Series 3 of Line Of Duty. Irritatingly, halfway through it I remembered how it ended. It didn’t detract from the build up though.

PoD was of ivy growing on the Juke’s Bridge at Chatelherault.

Tomorrow we may go to Glasgow, just for the run and the dash cam will be on!

27º in Scotland? – 31 July 2020

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That just can’t be right, surely? Yet, that was what the thermometer in the car read. The outside temperature this afternoon was 27ºc.

We knew it was going to be hot today, but although we’d been warned, we just didn’t believe it until it happened. We’d decided that we would go out somewhere for a walk. We’d considered and rejected a few places. There was no point in going to the seaside because everyone would be going there. We finally settled on Chatelherault which was once the hunting lodge of the Dukes of Hamilton. Now it’s a country park in South Lanarkshire. Every time I go there I think it’s obscene that one family should have owned such a house in an enormous tract of land while others, the workers, were living in slum conditions with a tiny postage stamp of a garden to grow basic vegetables if they were lucky. Thankfully this building and its lands are now owned by South Lanarkshire Council and are open to everyone, even the scruffs from North Lanarkshire!

We chose a walk that we’d been on before, down through the gigantic pine trees with the Avon Water flowing below us. At the end of the walk we saw this view and it became PoD. It was good to see the ordinary folk staking their claim to some space in the sun on such a bright and sunny day. Actually it wasn’t all that sunny, but it was bright and warm and a clever bit of software changed the sky from milky white to summer blue with fluffy clouds. That’s the way it should have been anyway!

Once we’d walked “round the policies” as Colin would say, we drove home leaving a parking space for one of the eagle eyed visitors. Drove home and had lunch, then sat in the warm air of the garden for a while reading and listening to weans with their Drum ’n’ Bass ‘thumpy tunes’ as they walked along the footpath behind the house. Were we like that once? I suppose we were. Rebels without a clue. Found a little neon blue weevil in the grass and took its photo before it flew away to its next modelling assignment. Still don’t know exactly what it was.

Dinner tonight was a freezer raid for me. Butcher’s burger from January, butcher’s sausages from May, Waitrose liver from yesterday and an egg from a different butcher and half a portion of fried potatoes. A very mixed grill, but delicious. Scamp had trout fillet with the other half portion of fried potatoes. It was clouding over and attempting to rain by the time we were finished dinner and on to pudding (blackcurrant jelly and ice cream) and soon after that came a flash of lightning and the rumble of thunder. The rain became torrential and I think you could say the heatwave was over, but we did get 27ºc on the way home from Chatelherault.

Tomorrow the temperature is predicted to be a more reasonable 17º to 19º. Warm, but not crazy warm. We’ll see.