Within reach ...

There's been such a lot of publicity the past couple of days about police stopping - even shaming with drone footage - people who have "driven for miles" to walk in the country, that we decided to spend the weekend walking from our door. (Not that we drive much to walk in our preferred haunts, but I'd hate actually to be stopped!). We headed up the road, between two houses, and onto the hillside. 

From there we climbed relentlessly for about 40 minutes - not a steep gradient, but a steady one. I'm blipping the view from just above the town,   taken on the way down in the suddenly brighter weather - our house is close to the church with the spire. I've not been along this particular bit of track for quite a few years, though it used to be a favourite walk when the forest was embryonic and our children much the same. Now the trees are tall and swaying, creaking in the wind like stressful birds, hiding the view and criss-crossed by far more tracks than I imagined. In no time at all, we were in another world, far from the fearful town and the thoughts of infection.

As we walked, I remembered when we first arrived in Dunoon, almost exactly 46 years ago. We lived in a school house in a council scheme facing this very hillside. I had a five-week-old baby and knew only one person in the town - and he lived right on the other side and neither he nor I could drive. I used to stand at the window and watch a large machine trundle slowly across the hillside. I could make out what looked like a track, but what was it doing?

Turns out it was planting young trees - or digging holes for them, or whatever. So 46 years ago, I watched this forest begin, and now we can lose ourselves in it. Sooner rather than later, I imagine, it'll be harvested and the view will reappear, but for now it is a mysterious place.

In other news, I've set up my new iPhone; the camera is superior to my previous phone and I'm learning to use it. And I'm about to leave a local Facebook group which is full of sanctimonious and inaccurate comments about "Old People". This Old Person is happy to have learned that the kind of exercise we take regularly has such an effect on the immune system that it reacts normally (ie as that of a much younger person). I'll be back ...