Pushing it ...

This morning began with the noise of the general rubbish bins being hurled around outside long before I was ready to think of being awake - the bin men making up for the Monday holiday. The recycling bin - for this, best beloved, was a two-bin week - has still to be emptied, so there are still bins on the pavement all along the crescent. By the time I was ready to think, it was to feel glum - the sort of existential gloom that I've referred to before - but it was dispelled by a friend's Facebook post, not directed particularly at me but just fortuitously there. 


By that time I'd arranged to go a walk with Di in the afternoon, which meant I did my Italian before lunch and dealt with drying a washing I'd done before realising that the morning was rather rainy. However, by the time I was going out the sun was breaking through and it seemed reasonably mild (is it a sign that my standards are slipping when I call 13ºC "mild" in May?) though still unsettled enough for a cagoule over my shirt. 

We'd arranged that I'd drive round to hers and we'd walk "round the block". This is a five-mile hike (I think - for some reason my Apple watch took the huff about halfway and stopped recording for a while) along the shore road in Blairmore, up the hill onto the forestry track up above the golf course before descending once more to the coast at Strone and walking back round the road to Blairmore - a satisfying, circular hike with quite a bit of puffing and some lovely views before the gentle descent. The photo was taken at the height of the track before we headed down; under the tumultuous clouds we could see down the Firth of Clyde as far as the Great Cumbrae on the left and the southern tip of Arran on the right, with Hunter's Quay hidden behind a bush and Dunoon one bay down on the coast. 

For both of us it was the longest walk we've done in a while, for a variety of reasons to do with infirmity (ours, or that of spice) and we were staggering slightly by the time we were back down on the road. I was wearing the trainers I bought in lockdown - mail order rather than trying them on - and though they're wonderfully waterproof (I'd had to wade a bit of a muddy flood) they are strangely rigid and the left one digs into the swelling that tends to erupt on my many-times-sprained left ankle. I really must look for a better pair.

Anyway, what had been a most unpromising day ended with a cheerful cuppa in Di's kitchen before I left - just like the old days - and the soothing close of Compline online. 

And I met a very hairy caterpillar on the road ...