Dryhope Tower

Although Edinburgh has reverted to standard damp dreich January weather, the Borders has had lots more snow. I walked over a bit of the Southern Upland Way, ending at St Mary's Loch. The large amounts of fresh snow on the hills didn't photograph well, but the Dryhope Tower on the way out did.

Woolgathering

The slow churn of people at work joining and leaving (mainly the later recently) has continually moved me, like a pebble on a beach, to lie next to different pebbles. To put it another way: I keep having to change the group I have lunch with. Our quintessentially millenial office in the woods allows me to stare out of the window (an office in the woods! - what would my dad think?) and not really attend to conversations about X Factor, or knitting, or football. The woods seem active today, or maybe I am just observant. See a squirrel, various tits, a bullfinch, and (probably) a treecreeper. Around me, beans on toast, low fat yoghurts and soup are consumed.

Not sure what this post is about. Thank you for your time.

Weekend pictures

Some pictures from the weekend. From Arthur's Seat, early in the morning:
Skies over Midlothian, from the Pentlands:
A cold snowy day, with better winter conditions than I've experienced on hills twice the height. And on the way down, some big icicles:

Yet further snow

I reckon we've now had about a fortnight during which I could always see snow in the streets or on roofs. This will be deeply unimpressive to you if you live in Canada, but for Britain it's pretty rare. You have to go back to the early 80s, or maybe even late 70s to find a precedent. Yesterday I visited some friends nearby, and we went skiing on a golf course (best use for it that I've ever found). After lunch, we did a South Edinburgh haute route from Blackford hill onto the Braid Hills. Although we did this on foot, there was snow all the way, raising the possibility of Norwegian style ski tours. If we got this more often, would I ski to work though the snowy wastes of Midlothian?