Saturday 12 August 2023
Yesterday, I walked over 19,000 steps according to my Fitbit. For this week at least, the Fitbit has worked at getting me walking more in Scotland … oh, but I’ve only been here two full days, so that’s not impressive. Yesterday’s walk was in the early evening and timed to coincide with Chris and Max driving back from a train station fifty minutes’ drive away from home. I set off when their train had left Edinburgh, giving me what should have been about an hour and forty-five minutes. However, their train was late so I ended up walking along the road for more than two hours, having already done at least 5,000 steps around home. The walk was great. I chatted out loud to myself, I listened to music through my phone speaker (very quiet) and took lots of photographs on my phone. I had in part wanted to walk further along the road because there’s an area I hadn’t walked past for a while where huge swathes of sitka spruce have been felled. I wanted to take some photos of the process of clearing trees. It’s really brutal. I feel really sad that a lot of the trees I photographed further along the road from that area are more than likely going to be felled next and that will mean one of my favourite stretches of road is going to be ruined. I like the bare hillsides, but I love tall spruce trees alongside the river and I like the mix of trees and moorland.
Sitka spruce probably soon to be felled
Today, it is raining. A lot. It is forecast to rain. All day. Chris and Max walked a lot in Edinburgh yesterday so today is going to be a more low-key day. The vague plan is to drive to Peebles for haggis and chocolate, as you do in Scotland! I am, however, reminded that twenty-somethings are generally not morning people so I have planned my day better already, by my having had a pre-breakfast breakfast before we all have a fry-up, which I suspect will be far nearer 10:00 than, say, 08:30. I know I’ve been saying recently how much less time-obsessed I have been since moving up here, but waiting indefinitely to eat breakfast is a step too far for me.
It’s been good spending time with Max, as it was with Chris’s younger son, Sam, a few months ago. I think it’s a lot easier to have quality time with them when we’re all out in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do in the evenings other than sit around the table eating and chatting. I made a pineapple upside down cake for pudding last night. I was so pleased with myself for having all the ingredients, largely because when we moved here in November and decided to stock up on tins and other pantry stuff, I decided that tinned pineapple would be essential. I’m not sure why considering we never eat tinned fruit. However, I have always had a bit of a soft spot for pineapple upside down so maybe I did have visions of being snowed in and baking and eating lots of old school puddings, though part of the problem is the likelihood of power cuts, so no baking. Oh well, tinned fruit itself is a pudding. Anyway, pineapple upside down for pudding, and we have almost half left for pudding tonight too, hurrah.