Fritillary in flower with multi-headed daffodils

I’ve felt exhausted all day after my very long and interrupted train journeys yesterday. We left Connel Ferry, just outside Oban in Argyll at 9am on the bumpy train to Glasgow. The weather was wonderful with blue skies for most of the way from the west Highlands of Scotland, with occasional mists and fog drifting across the tops of the glens.

Helena and I came to Argyll to attend the funeral service and interment of her mother Kirsty’s ashes. The church was filled with many members of the family as well as Kirsty’s friends.

I haven’t blipped for some time because of the circumstances and will back blip in due course, hopefully quite soon.

Helena went on another train from Glasgow to stay with one of her brothers in Aberdeen. My journey continued to Edinburgh’s Waverley station where I took the ‘Cross Country’ train headed south to Plymouth in Devon. All was well until we reached Northumberland where technical problems brought signal delays and the train became more crowded at every station we called at. The train company had managed to provide only four instead of the normal eight carriages for passengers on such a pivotal long distance service.

We finally arrived in Cheltenham Spa forty minutes late so I missed my connection home to Stroud. I finally got home just before 10pm, where I was warmly greeted by our sleepy cat, Indie, if a cat can be warm.

I’ve been mostly occupied by housework today and despite more beautifully sunny weather I didn’t go wandering. While in the garden I spotted that a fritillary had flowered and the unknown daffodil bulbs I bought months ago had blossomed, so I thought I’d catch the late afternoon light and return to blipping. The multi-headed flowers of the daffodils were a very pretty surprise, and worth recording.