Highly favoured ...

[Idiot. Now I'll have The Angel Gabriel on the brain when I go to bed] 
Last night I noticed on the BBC weather map that there seemed to be a line between zones - for temperature, I think - passing right up the Firth of Clyde, and wondered idly how/if they could be so precise. Turns out they were quite right: we had peerless blue sky and uninterrupted sunshine from sunrise till darkness, while my sister in Ayr, to the south and east of us, was languishing under damp cloud. 

The sun hadn't yet risen when I headed out shopping this morning, and I was caught out by the beads of moisture on the car windscreen which weren't at all frozen, but when wiped with the windscreen wipers so that I could see out turned immediately to the thinnest of ice covering the whole area I'd wiped, causing me to have to sit fuming in the lane until it melted. This car doesn't have the integrated heating element in the glass that our dear departed Kuga had.

I was late back because of chatting to someone in the shop, so breakfast passed seamlessly into coffee and on into "let's go out while the sun's high..." with the result that a great pile of dishes was left to wash in the kitchen while we headed down to Loch Striven. We walked the first part of the road, from the first lay-by to the old schoolhouse at Inverchaolain - a longer walk at almost 4 miles than we've been doing recently. I don't know if it's lack of practice, or art gallery legs*, or simply increasing decrepitude, but my legs definitely ached by the time we 'd finished. It was glorious, however - so still that we could hear the tiny waves on the shore; pairs of oyster-catchers fussing on the beach; a dark-coloured heron flapping away from us over the loch.

And when we turned to walk back, facing into the sun, wishing we'd remembered sunglasses, there it was: the line of cloud to the south and up the other side of the firth that showed that the forecasters last night hit the spot with complete accuracy. 

Home by 3pm, we ate a small helping of bread and cheese; I read the papers, tangible and online,  made a loaf for tomorrow's breakfast and poached some prunes in tea with maple syrup and star anise. Then dinner - the very last end of the beef wellington, supplemented with far too many vegetables for an altogether restful night - and the first of the new series of Granchester. 

Beginning to wonder if our cruise holiday is doomed as the PM calls a meeting about military action in the Red Sea...