De Do Heron-ron-ron De Do Heron

Sod it, another bird photo. I don't care.

And again the robin was beaten into second place. Also seen were thrushes, possibly some redwings, and goosanders. Where? On the Water of Leith. Good day all round. Really good day. Up reasonably early, off to the newsagent for a paper, and grab a cooked brekkie. Then on a bus to Balerno to meet friends Iain and Mary (though they missed out bus, so caught us up 20 minutes later) to go for our first practice/training walk for the Caley Challenge in June. Only a little over ten miles from Balerno to Stockbridge, but on the snow and ice that lingers by the river it felt a lot longer. A lot easier than I remember the first training walk 9 years ago when I first tried to complete the Caley Challenge though - years of cycle commuting have started to have an effect obviously.

Really nice to get out for most of the day though, and feels even better to have done something 'physical' with the day. We'll gloss over the fact we finished it off with a drink (or two (or three)) at the end, and Mel and I are now sitting in front of Antiques Roadshow with a bottle of wine...

Interesting observation from the walk. Outside the city walls everyone we passed returned a smile and said hello. The further we got into the city those looks became a cautious glance behind which the eyes asked 'should we say hello? I mean, I don't know those people, who knows what might happen...' and by the time we were in the centre of Edinburgh the only glances cast were towards the feet with 90% of those going by suffering sullen expressions that would have had my mum making some declaration about the wind changing...