Bob's Pumping Station

On this gloriously summery day we took a circular walk round Roslin, starting after coffee at Dolly's Tearoom.

From Manse Road we took the path North West at the Memorial to the Battle of Roslin, which, passing the R&B Nursery, brought us out onto the B7006.

Here we might have followed the road back to the village but chose to cross for the path opposite, by this building, Killburn Waste Water Pumping Station. We pass it often and it is known to us as Bob's Pumping Station. Bob was already an established engineer in Midlothian County Engineers department dealing with waste water systems when Mr Flum joined in 1970 and it was he that designed the contents of this little building, to convey the  increased waste from the village when the new Wimpy estate was built. The waste travels via Lasswade and Wallyford to the main sewage works at Seafield (which Mr Flum helped to construct). We wondered whether it would cope with all the houses under construction at present - some 300-odd adjacent, and, if the terrain allows, another 300 opposite, on the site of the old Roslin Institute (of Dolly the Sheep fame).

Thus our walk continued past Moat (of which nothing of the farm remains) as far as the land on the site of the Roslin colliery, to link up with the old railway path, returning to the village by way of a visit to Miss Flum, who was on her lunch break.

Extra photo shows some of the creatures we met along the way:
Ermine moth caterpillars emerging from their silken 'nest'; Speckled Wood (Pararge aegeria) butterfly; Greater Stitchwort (Stellaria holostea); toadstools growing on the runoff from a stable manure heap. Strangely, although St Mark's flies, among others, were in profusion we saw neither Swallows nor Martins.