This morning we left the cats in the capable hands of J and set off North for Aigas. It is about 120 miles from Lochgoilhead, near Beauly on the Black Isle. Although it is good (by Highland standards) roads all the way, we reckoned it would take us over 3 hours because of general congestion. […]
R and I are off on holiday this week – hopefully with a bit more leisure than on our last trip away where our conference holiday in Cambridge seemed to turn into a lot more conference than holiday. This time we are going to the Aigas Field Centre near Inverness for a week. There will […]
Something is stirring…. Since yesterday I have been hearing some odd noises coming from the woods. At first I thought it was cows bellowing – but it suddenly occurred to me that this is starting to come in to the Red deer rutting season. I looked up what noises they make here – http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Red_Deer and […]
I am in Helensburgh this afternoon and unusually for me without a tablet PC. So I thought I would try a blog posting using just my phone. And here it is…
Tonight R and I walked up the Donich Circular to the Waterfalls. It was a wonderful evening for it, clear and lovely. When we got up on to the hillside at the other side of the falls, the sun has just set and the sky was stippled with golden clouds, while the hills and loch […]
I made a fancy French ‘Tarte aux Pommes’ tonight to use up some of the apples from our trees on something a bit memorable. It was (or is – we haven’t finished it yet) a sweet pastry case (make it like shortcrust pastry only with a bit more butter to flour than usual (8oz flour, […]
Today we did another fantastic walk – this one courtesy of R (whose idea it was). The weather is much much better for walking now than it was a month ago – as well as all the midgies being gone, it is also quite cool and crisp. I must say that I deliberately slackened off […]
During the course of the summer we haven’t seen that many birds… Well we have seen them around of course – but not in the numbers there were in the winter and spring, and often we could leave the feeder all day with little activity. Now all of a sudden they are back in force […]
Since I took these photographs this morning he has just come in with yet another one. Alive and intact this time. I managed to catch it and put it outside – it went scooting off into the undergrowth as fast as its little legs would take it. For such a sweet fluffy little fuzzball – […]
We saw some fantastic insects today, and the first of the autumn fungi are starting to appear. An enormous dragonfly landed on the path in front of me and obligingly let me take his picture. Then a lovely peacock butterfly followed suit. Nature’s harvest is obviously ready very early this year. There are hazelnuts on […]
