The Scottish summer keeps giving

This has been the longest run of great summer days we’ve had in a very long time. We took full advantage by getting up at an unfeasible hour, and heading off on a walk from Flotterstone before 7am. Our original estimate suggested that the walk would take just over two hours, which would mean that we would be back in the car park before the cafe even opened. The route we took is here.

In fact, the walk up to Glencorse, over Capelaw Hill, Fala Knowle and Castlelaw Hill (in the latter case only me, and it wasn’t particularly rewarding) took just over three hours. It was unbroken sunshine, until we finally came into some welcome shade around Castlelaw Farm, and the strength of the sun on us as we came back down the road to the car park made us very happy we had decided to walk so early. Perhaps the best sight of the day was the huge field of rapidly ripening barley in the valley near the car park, with Turnhouse Hill in the background. The photograph doesn’t show it, but the reasonably brisk wind was rippling through the crop. I should have taken a video.

The only kicker was that we got to the car park and the cafe was not open, and no signs saying “summer holidays”. But we can all imagine the circumstances in which a cafe suddenly doesn’t open these days….

We headed home via the supermarket, for a quiet afternoon with a couple of snoozes. The flat was rather too warm, but the wind meant that it was hard to open all the windows/doors we would have liked to open. As on the previous day, I ferried large quantities of water out on to the balcony, to keep the plants alive. They can easily drink, between them, about 12 litres a day.

Back out across the road to Campervan Brewery for beers and bbq snacks with blippers Magi and rowanhagdorn. It was great to meet them and the chat flowed as smoothly as the beer.

Thanks for the kind notes and comments on my 11th anniversary blip yesterday. I’ll try to reply individually. I paid less account to it than the 4K blip which came shortly before, because the inclusion of some back blips has somewhat messed up the sense of an ‘anniversary’ (which comes in September). But your comments were very generous, so thank you.