Tuesday 2 May 2023
Yesterday, we walked a lot off-road. Today I feel pleasantly tired. It wasn’t beautiful weather but it didn’t rain and every now and then, particularly in the morning, the sun came out and everywhere that already looks gorgeous looked even more beautiful. We walked through and alongside so many fields of sheep that I now have a catalogue of sheep and lamb photos.
Fiona and Andy live in Folkestone, so the kind of distance from where we live/lived in London that we usually meet up for daytrips. That’s great, obviously, but, though I stayed with Fiona and Andy last autumn, we haven’t spent a chunk of time together – actually, the four of us, I don’t think we have ever spent longer than a few hours, possibly one night all of us stayed in London. Anyway, the point is that if we had all decided to meet up when we were living in London, it would most likely have been for a day. It’s been good “having to” spend longer catching up. When people stay longer than a night, they inevitably become incorporated into your everyday life and it’s been good reconnecting with them, indeed all our friends, on that level since moving away from the southeast.
The first thing that comes to mind about yesterday was all sitting in the sun in front of St Mary’s Kirkyard, overlooking St Mary’s Loch and some very sweet sheep and lambs. That really is one of those places that can’t help but make you feel calm. I say that but I have only ever been there when it’s been sunny; I may caveat that impression if I ever go there on a wet, foggy, windy day. Fiona and Andy then casually strode across the river and up the see-through spiral staircase of Dryhope Tower. Dryhope is a ruined fortified manor house from the 1500s which Nicky and I had abandoned trying to climb up due to vertigo. I sat and observed proceedings yesterday from the bank above the river. Fiona walked across the river, my having uttered various warnings about how perilous a crossing it is, as if it were part of the grassy path. In my defence, it was a little more shallow and I’m sure someone had placed some large stones suitable for stepping on along the obvious crossing point. They both made it across and back and up the spiral staircase to the top of the tower without incident other than a bit of water over the top of a boot and hands dirty from bird poo on the staircase handrail.
After our morning out, we didn’t get back until 15:00. Mitch was busy overachieving on the reconstruction of our pig shed-shed (actually, we now think it was a dog shed, so dog shed-shed) and we hadn’t had lunch. Mitch came indoors for tea and Fiona and I demonstrated exceptional speed putting together ingredients in a recipe that ended up being the talk of the afternoon for its amazingness. I think Fiona and I went a bit Mitch with the speed and efficiency with which we assembled a spectacular salad and dressing. It’s amazing what being hungry and being in the presence of an overachiever can do for productivity levels.
Fiona, Andy and I then went out for one of my favourite local walks, through the marshes and forest, stopping for a while to have coffee and a weighty slab of Selkirk Bannock. They agreed that Selkirk Bannock is like a heavier, denser version of panettone, kind of should be disappointing for being sort of dry, not massively sweet and yet somehow just right. By the time we sat down to eat and drink, around 17:15, we needed the extra fuel as the next chunk of the walk involved scaling a mountain (ish) and clambering over fallen trees. There was only one fall, which was a lengthy mud skid and flat-out landing on a mossy pathway. That was Fiona. She managed a soft landing on a cushion of moss and her backpack probably padded her from a large stone. She said something like, “Oh, go on, take a photograph!”, which I did while we were all still laughing, but the angle makes it look like she’s lying on a flat mossy bed by design, no sense of the steepness of the path or the sweep of the slip! The photo above is of her surveying her slip mark. It is more ‘impressive’ in real life.
They’re heading down to County Durham today for another couple of nights away and I have just registered that it’s Tuesday and not a bank holiday.