Walking Anti-Clockwise

For 47 years or thereabouts I have walked in the Stornoway Castle Grounds. For some reason which I cannot explain, 99% of the time (perhaps more) my walk has been in a clockwise direction. 

Today, after having had breakfast in The Woodlands Café, I decided to walk in an anti-clockwise direction. It felt quite strange.

However that was not all that was unusual. I noticed something that I cannot recall being so aware of before. The huge number of Blackbirds flying around. There are a lot of birds in the Grounds from Cranes and Ravens down in size to Wrens. Most of the time the most noticeable bird is the Robin. However this year there seems to have been a dearth of birds on many of my walks. Today was different. I doubt that there was a single step when there was not a Blackbird or several Blackbirds in view. 

Anyway I thought that, as it's a while since I showed any pictures of my walks, I'd show you a few today. 

The first thing I did was check the rain app to make sure I wasn't going to get soaked because I wasn't dressed for an 'any-weather' walk. I had enough time for the 'Short Walk' which is about 1.3 miles

A Winter Canal Walk

A month or so ago when I was down in Bishopbriggs we went for a walk alongside the canal. It was a driech morning. Yesterday we repeated the walk on a bitterly cold but beautifully sunny afternoon.

Berthed at The Stables pub in an iced-over canal

We walked under the bridge to the left of the photo and towards Kirkintilloch.

Pleasure cruise canal boats were operating.

Homeward bound into the setting sun

The reward back at The Stables.

Carbohydrates, Nuclear Weapons and the Menopause.

How to delay the menopause. 

Various news media came up with all sorts of headlines from The Sun's 'Cutting carbs from your diet could delay the menopause for FIVE YEARS' to The Telegraph's 'Eating oily fish could delay the menopause by three years' whilst  The Scotsman backed both horses with the headline 'Oily fish could delay menopause while carbs may hasten it.' The BBC article came up with the neutral headline 'How your diet could influence the age of your menopause'. The BBC article is quite informative.

Two things occurred to me: how early does one have to start this diet alteration to delay the menopause or hasten it; and why would one want to delay it? In any case in my experience no one quite knows when the menopause is going to strike anyway. It's going to happen (with varying degrees of hellishness) so one is only putting off the inevitable at best.

I was going to mention the rather odd statement by Benjamin Netanyahu that Iran would only be developing nuclear weapons if it intended to use them. But that could be controversial so I decided not to do so.

On a more positive note I've progressed from 2 to 3 and now up to 6 mile walks in the morning (pushing wee Brodie in his off-road buggy round the Castle Grounds) and then 5 hours hard labour in the garden in the afternoon. The body is well on the road to it's pre-last-September condition.

Walking: Continued

Yesterday morning I walked twice the distance (3 miles) of the day before in 1½ times the time (just under an hour). I then spent 4 hours in the garden doing some pretty physical maintenance work. Today I repeated yesterday's walk. It's a while since I've felt this physically fit and it feels pretty good.

In fact I'm really looking forward to this spring and summer in all sorts of ways: spending time with my grandson; the garden; visitors; starting a new pastime in the form of bowls (I just can't see me getting to Glasgow often enough to play croquet again to the level I had become accustomed in New Zealand); more walking (made possible, ironically, by my latest series of hospital visits); and so many more ways. Life is pretty darn good. 

A few photos from this morning's walk:

The Lews Castle. The open ground is where, amongst other things, the Celtic Festival is held each year.

The historic Gaff Ketch 'Tecla'. Webpage here.

Setting sail past me walking along the harbour-side path

Another memorial seat has been added for walkers wanting some contemplation time

A Walk In The Woods

Well it's a start. Since my hospitalisation last September I've been unable for much of the time to go for 'proper' walks i.e. ones that get the muscles going and the heart pumping.  I've not even been to the gym very much. Since my visit to Ayr Hospital last week things have improved immeasurably and today I decided that I would don my trusty walking shoes and go for a short but purposeful walk in the Stornoway Castle Grounds. 

It was just  a mile and a half with a few short gradients to tackle. Along the shore road the wind was very strong and that always makes catching one's breath difficult. In the woods, however, it was very pleasant indeed.

Since the 1987 hurricane which brought down a great many of the very elderly trees the woods have undergone a huge transformation with hundreds of trees felled and hundreds planted. The main difference for those of us acquainted with the woods for over 4 decades is the removal of almost all the rhododendrons which had grown wild and covered every available free bit of ground. This has allowed much more light into the woods allowing new trees to flourish.

Wild daffodils on the shore roadside

Great paths for prams

Now that's the sort of helpful notice I like

Cuddy Point and Stornoway Harbour

There's still a few wildish bits

Walking

I love walking. I always have done. The areas I loved for walking as a young man were North Wales and The English Lake District. There was an openness and a closeness to the countryside because of the smallness. Scotland is wonderful and grand but many of its mountains could not be climbed by someone living on Merseyside (as I did until I came to live in Scotland) half a century ago without taking a holiday for the purpose. However I could get into the car and spend a day or a weekend on the Lake District fells. And I often did. One of my favourite places in the sixties was Borrowdale and, particularly, the little village of Grange-in-Borrowdale where I used to stay at Riggside. This is the post office in, I think, 1970.

The wide open treeless fells were often used for hound trailing. Unlike hunting a man ran with a scented lure tied behind him and the hounds set off later.

Like Yorkshire Pudding, one of my principal loves when out walking was taking photographs.

I wrote this because of a recent post by Librarian who writes frequently about her wonderful walks and recently showed us a walk through coniferous forests. I love deciduous forests but I cannot walk alone through coniferous forests without becoming hemmed in with claustrophobia and a real feeling of dread. What is odd is that I don't feel like that if I have a companion. Out on the fells though there is no such feeling at all. One is free.