This looked like the last good day for a while, so we went walking again.
We were off to East Kilbride today to Calderglen Country Park. One of EK’s best kept secrets. I think they just want it kept neat and tidy with none of the scruff from Glasgow and North Lanarkshire allowed access. But the reckoned without us. We’d been there before, when there were signs showing where it was and how to get in, so we got in!
It really is a lovely park with walks through steep sided glens and bridges across rushing streams. Well, actually it’s just bridges across the same rushing stream, but who’s counting. Most of the paths were in good nick, but there were a few places that could perhaps have done with a fence to prevent the unwary from taking a tumble. We didn’t take a tumble, but the opportunity was there. Light was lovely, especially since the trees are still bare, allowing it to shine through the branches and cast long shadows on the ground.
As we walked, we both remembered different bits of the path as we reached them. I’m not sure we had walked the full circuit we did today, the last time we were there, but certainly bits of it were familiar. I made a few miscalculations photographically speaking. I was finding it difficult to get focus on a big patch of snowdrops through the tracery of tree branches and set the camera to manual focus just to check that I was controlling it, not the other way round. It was only after taking a good dozen photos, I realised I hadn’t set it back to automatic. Luckily nobody but me would notice the difference! In fact the PoD was one of the slightly out of focus shots.
Lots of folk with lots of dogs. I think we only passed two people who didn’t have a four legged animal trotting along beside them. Most of the folk were friendly with a smile and a “Morning!” However, there were some who didn’t recognise our faces and just KNEW we were outsiders. Maybe Glasgow ‘Keelies’ or worse still, North Lanarkshire Louts, here to steal our scenery or leave litter everywhere. They were the ones who didn’t speak.
We had hoped to have a seat, a coffee and a bite to eat at the end of our walk, but there was a 20 – 30min wait for a table at the cafe and food was going to take between 15 and 20mins. Gone were my chances of a roll ’n’ sausage with fried onions. Instead we both settled for a flat white and slice of tipsy cake to eat in the car. Eat in the car, because there was a really cold wind getting up and we didn’t want to sit on the wooden benches in the outside courtyard chittering. Drove home afterwards with half the tipsy cake to eat later.
That was about it for the day. Dinner tonight was Muttar Paneer (Peas and Indian cheese) for dinner. Scamp made the dinner, I made the flat bread.
Happy 8th Wedding Anniversary to Jamie and Sim. Hope you had a great day.
Tomorrow looks wet, in fact I do believe the weather is practising as I write! Maybe another bread kit tomorrow.