A change of pace

Last night in a moment of feeling oppressed by the winter duvet I opened all three of the bedroom windows, with the result that the first thing I heard when I woke was a blackbird, singing its heart out in the still morning. (I also felt a tad chilly, but that's another matter to do with the difficulties of knowing just when to get out the summer duvet.)

We had a change of celebrant at church this morning - a visit from the Chaplain to the Mission to Seafarers, whom we've not seen since pre-pandemic and who always makes a great job of reminding us of just how badly we need seafarers to keep our lives as we live them. He tells a good tale; it's always good to see him - which is, I imagine, how many seafaring folk think of him.

In the quiet grey afternoon which had somehow failed to become sunny despite looking that way earlier, we both put on our walking boots (mine, alas, still a tad damp after yesterday) for a walk. We headed for Glen Massan, which tends not to be busy even on a bank holiday Sunday, and at my suggestion started off not up the road but up the rough forestry track on the other side - the one that passes Emma Thomson's house. We've hardly walked on anything but tarmac this year, as Himself didn't feel up to it, so it felt almost adventurous.

All I can say is that by the time we got back to the car I was euphoric. We'd not walked far - about 3.50 miles altogether - but the road was rough, it fell away in places, there were several dips and corresponding ascents, and it ended after a steep climb, and my back hadn't ached once. Every time we've gone for a walk recently, I've had backache within the first fifteen minutes and felt really old and stiff, but not today. I reckon the faithful boots offer a better walking position, and I'm convinced that it's always less tiring to walk on varied surfaces than it is to pound along a road. Besides, there wasn't another soul, the air  was scented and full of birdsong, and the green froth of the young foliage on the deciduous trees contrasted beautifully with the severe dark conifers. It struck me that this is what I've lived here for these past 48 years.

Blipping a view across the still, dark Massan Burn to the fields beyond and the hill we climbed in the Spring of that desperate first lockdown.