Today’s guest picture, sent to me by Venetia, my Somerset correspondent, shows a splendid view from the top of Glastonbury Tor. It was taken two years ago.
We woke to sound of the rain drumming on the roof and widows once again but by the end of the day, things had calmed down a lot.
In between times, the house was full of intermittent efforts to master the ukulele. Judging by early results, it might be some time before we get a booking at the Albert Hall.
Dropscone dropped in with scones for coffee and updated us with a visit he had made to the physio. He is suffering from ‘golfer’s elbow’. This is much like tennis elbow but more distinguished. He has been given a set of fiendish exercises to do and as the weather is not conducive to golf at the moment, he may have time to recover.
It certainly wasn’t a morning for looking at birds, though of course I did have one or two glances out of the window.
The wet weather clogs the seed up in the feeders and I have to go out and shoogle them about quite frequently. The sparrow hawk is paying frequent visits to the garden at the moment but doesn’t often catch the little birds napping.
Once again, the afternoon was a lot better than the morning, so after lunch, Mrs Tootlepedal, Annie and I drove off to the Hollows to take a circular walk up the road to Gilnockie and back down the track beside the Byreburn.
There were glimpses of blue sky but mostly it was grey and not conducive to photography. It was warm enough though to make the walk itself very pleasant.
We had to choose a walk on roads and tracks because everything else is absolutely soggy.
After climbing the hill to Gilnockie, we dropped down to the Byreburn…
…and turned on to the track through the woods.
Both the roads and the track had been visited quite recently by a man with a tractor and a flail and the verges had been thoroughly cleared of anything interesting which was a bit disappointing…..
…but this did make it easier to see the Byreburn as it burbled along beside the track.
Once again, I was surprised by how low the water is after so much rain in recent days but it was a rich peaty brown as it tumbled over the many little cascades on its was down to the Esk.
I was hoping that the flailers might have cleared some of the trees that block the view of the Fairy Loup but these were too far from the track and they were still there to annoy me.
Mrs Tootlepedal was interested to be able to pick up a few lumps of coal which had fallen out of an exposed seam at the side of the track. This area use to be a busy coal mining centre and there are still plans to get at the big seam that underlies this part of the country. Here and there, alongside streams, the coal is clearly visible.
I was more interested in the many coloured lichens on the parapet of the bridge where the old A7 crosses the Byreburn.
I don’t know how long the lichens have been there but the bridge is 165 years old. It was paid for by the tolls on the turnpike rood.
Byreburn House was looking very elegant at the far end of the bridge.
The division of fields often looks rather arbitrary but I like this geometry of the walls on the far bank of the river.
When we got back to the car, we took a moment to go down to the Hollows Bridge and look at the Archimedes screw that had been installed at the mill there. To our delight, it started to whirl into action as we watched.
We hadn’t walked very far but quite far enough to be able to enjoy a toasted tea cake with a clear conscience when we got home. There was a tinge of sadness though, as these were the last of the batch that Annie and I made two days ago.
There was more tinkling of ukuleles before tea and then Mrs Tootlepedal and I went out for the final practice of our Langholm choir before our concert in Waterbeck on Friday. We went through most of the projected programme and I couldn’t say that the performance will be flawless but it ought to be good enough to be enjoyed by an understanding audience.
There was no flying bird of the day today so a blue tit kindly stood in instead.
