Just another day

What a day.  The alarm clock didn't go off, and I overslept by an hour. As a result poor Gus was rushed up and down the Knott, I missed my chance with a pink-flushed sunrise sky, and there was no time for breakfast before we set off for Wifie's Monday class.  Then a man in a Land Rover with a trailer pulled out in front of us when we were doing 40mph along the Sandside road. I sensed he was going to do it, and was already braking hard, and a crash was averted.

Wifie's class went well, and there was a chance for a photo on the way home. Then I found I had somehow switched on the camera after charging the battery last night, and the old defective 300mm lens had caused it to discharge again. Opportunity lost.

The wind had picked up and the light was going fast as Gus and I went for our second walk of the day. As we climbed up one of the steeper paths through Redhills Wood, I had my second lucky escape of the day.  A dead birch tree fell down 6 feet from us, parallel to the route we were on. There was no warning crack, it fell silently, waterlogged and heavy, and no doubt it would have been fatal to either or both of us had its angle of fall been just a few degrees different.

Up in Redhills Pasture we stopped for a few shots of the big red cows that have replaced the much-missed Highlands that provided so many photo opportunities until last year when Flumgummery saw them being led away to their fate.  I have not tried to photograph the red cows before, they are handsome, but not so individual as the Highlands. Besides there is a big bull with a ring in his nose, and I've been cautious about getting too close with Gus with me. This lady was stirring quite an interest in the bull (behind her in this shot), and she was beginning to take an interest in man and dog. So rather than risk needing a third lucky escape, we discreetly retreated home.

By now the rain had set in, and our ever-helpful friend Arnside Simon had arrived to provide transport and muscle-power to help us at extremely short notice in shifting some furniture from Staveley that had been gifted to us from a good friend of Wifie. The weather was awful, we loaded everything onto Simon's truck and our (t)rusty Jazz. On the way home, the polythene sheet we had covering everything was rapidly shredded in the gusting wind. We made it home, and everything is drying out now in the house ready to be moved to Yorkshire in a few weeks.

Good friends, good fortune.