Clearing ...

We had a dull morning here in Dunoon; it looked set to be a grey, dry, chilly day. I did the kind of things one does on such a morning - with the additional joy of having the Gas Man in again, putting a new jet and new coals on that fire, which then began to misbehave again and led to his being here for two hours ... I told him I thought I should begin inviting him for breakfast. I actually took my tea and toast into the sitting room and watched telly while I ate, a sinful activity which I associate with self-catering holidays and those lovely stays in the Ravelston flat. Telly is a much more compelling time-waster than radio, I find. But I dragged myself out of the warm into the chill of the rest of the house (no fire on, doors left open as GM tested the gas pressure and so on) and put on a washing which was bone dry outside by the end of the afternoon, for the first time since the autumn. Oh, and I trotted along to the Health Store for odds and ends ...

By the end of my lunch, I realised the clouds were breaking up. I'd arranged to meet Di out along the road to Loch Eck to go for a walk I'd not been in years, and by the time we coincided at the parking place it was a glorious afternoon. The walk was almost continuously uphill on a forest road which has recently been reinforced for the lorries taking out the timber. Much of it has been removed because of the larch tree disease that I mentioned a few days back, and though the ground that has been cleared looks a mess, it's opened up the most wonderful views. We walked to the place where Puck's Glen crosses the trail before turning back, a distance of 3.75 miles, with Di's two spaniels running rings round us on their long leads (they don't do well with other dogs and have to be kept on the lead; we did meet one ...). By the time we got back down, stopping to admire two horses with shaggy winter coats, I'd walked 14,000 steps and resolved to do more of this kind of thing instead of the devastating road walks I've been doing recently.

Blipping the view from fairly near the beginning of our walk, looking back down to Loch Eck and the hills to the west. I've just been out in the garden looking at the moon, which is bright enough to illuminate the whole garden.