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?

Told you so

Yes, my next walk was somewhat miserable. Tranent to Pathhead on slippy wet snow under a grey sky. The low point came when we felt we ought to have some sort of lunch stop, and stood among dripping branches in a wood for ten minutes. The day did improve after this, and the hill up from GlenKinchie distillery brought some crisper snow. More incident too: we helped somebody get their car out of the snow, and a few fields later saw a barn owl hunting along the hedges.

Mair snow

First thing this morning, I had one of those half-awake thoughts. "Wouldn't it be funny if there had been a huge snowfall overnight, and the world is turned white?" Then I looked out and it had.

There had been remnants of snow the night before, but there was now a perfect, even covering. There was snow banked up at the base of my windows, and skeins of spindrift reached out between the rooftops.

As you can perhaps guess, I retain enough of a kid inside me to still enjoy some extreme weather, especially when I have nothing in particular to do at work. I'm certainly not alone in this. As I made my bus journey, the shared sense of adversity produced a kind of camaraderie with my fellow travelers. We offered personal experiences of our journeys so far, swapped stories about the stupid things we'd seen people doing, and shared plans for the rest of our day. I wonder if anybody has studied the positive effect of extreme weather?

I got to go home early too, and saw these tower blocks catching the afternoon sun.

Snow

My flat has a nice view, but I find it hard to photograph. You really have to see it. Here's quite a nice picture of Blackford Hill from this morning anyway.

In other news, snow and ice on Arthur's Seat reduced my time to 17 minutes. On the way down, a walker on his way up warned me of the ice. "I know!" I answered, and did a standing glissade down the path towards him. We did a short dance of awkward laughter and skidding feet until we were both stable again.

Sunday walk

I've started going walks with a local club, and yesterday's outing to Dunkeld was my second. It was a day of classic winter high pressure: clear and cold with banks of fog and frost over everything. A great day for pictures.

That's Schiehallion in the distance looking a bit like Mount Fuji. And to its right, Farragon Hill, which I have managed not to get to a couple of times.

There were predictions of the walk being a mudbath, but the heavy frost made the turf like concrete, and froze lochs most picturesquely.
How nice of those swans to position themselves as pure white accents in the scene.

Savor these delicate harmonies in grey and brown. My next walk will no doubt be soggy and damp.

Yum

I seem to have discovered another talent: baking. We had a sale of baking at work today, and my carrot cake was consumed by ravening coworkers by 10.20. I didn't get a bit myself either, though I did of course get to lick the bowl last night.

I wonder what it is about women and gooey cakes?

I must use my gift wisely.

Arthur's Seat

Better pacing today bought me to the top in 14 minutes.

In fairness to my previous comments, I should point out that there were a couple of local lads on top, who asked me where lots of things were before I got my breath back.

Arthur's Seat

It's a lovely day today. I went up Arthur's Seat this morning (and how many cities have their own mountain, albeit a small one?). I used to do this fairly regularly and in a nerdy but harmless way, would measure the time from my doorstep to the top. I think 21 or 22 minutes was the record. This is only my second ascent since moving, so I think I should start making the exercise more regular. And my new benchmark is 16 minutes from the park gates to the top.

It is an exceptionally clear day. From the top, a line of peaks in the Highlands were visible, where normally there is cloud or haze. The summit viewpoint indicator actually misses quite a few out, but I had prepared with a crib sheet. Some of the more impressive sightings were Ben Bhuide, Ben More and Stob Binnean, Ben Lawers, and a bit of Beinn A Ghlo.

I had a chat on top with a German student about hills and Edinburgh. It's always noticeable how few natives you meet up there.

I didn't have my camera, so no nice pictures, I'm afraid.

PS: Just realised how similar this is to a previous post. Clearly, I'm becoming very predictable.

Oh dear

Radio 4's 6.30 comedy spot doesn't get any better. A hilarious programme set in a tourist information centre, anyone?

Bookmarks

I've just purchased some big bookcases to replace various small ones that I've acquired over the years. So last night I had some anoraky fun sorting out my books. Quite a few contained abandoned bookmarks. I've never been one for using proper bookmarks, usually just grabbing any handy piece of paper, so these form a kind of demented summary of my last 20 years. In no particular order:

• Receipt for OPTIKA, 22 Stall St, Bath on 17 August 1996. Looks like I had an eye test, though I have no memory of this.
• Receipt for Napier University library, recording the borrowing of Mathematics in Western culture on 05 January 2005.
• Slip of paper torn from a A4 sheet. The header has Chapter 5 The Holos Worksheet.
• Cheap day return, Edinburgh to Dalmeny, 11 September 2004.
• Credit card receipt for Edinburgh-Glasgow monthly ticket, 30 October 2006. £250! No wonder I left that job.
  
• Receipt from Ipswich and Norwich Co-op for compost, 12 April 2003. I was served by Lynn.
• Wrapper from Terry's Waifa. Best before APR97.
• Two genuine bookmarks from Word Power books. Recent.
  
• Ditto, much creased, from Waterstones, circa 1997.
• Ditto, from John Smith and Sons, Glasgow, early 90s.
  
• Punched Fortran card. Rescued from Glasgow University Physics Dept, circa 1990.
• Ticket for the Courtauld Gallery, bearing a detail from Manet's A Bar at the Folies-Bergere.
• Seagate Pound. A fake pound note produced as a drinks voucher for a company bash. By means of Photoshop, our company secretary's head was substituted for the queen's, and didn't she look the part. Late 90s.
• Room card from Spread Eagle Hotel, Thame. Probably 1998.
• Business card/bookmark from Tin Can Mailman, Arcata, CA. I bought from them via abebooks. December 2001.
• Nice bookmark, bought in Paris, reproducing drawing by Gustave Moreau. I wondered where that had got to.
  

Beinn Chabhair

The forecast for yesterday was excellent, so it would have felt wrong not to go up a hill somewhere.

I've pretty much been through the Southern Highlands, so picked out Beinn Chabhair, which I've not done since some time in the early 90s.

Other than the well-known waterfall that you pass on the way up, I recognised very little from my previous visit. Funny how much you forget.

I feel I'm fairly fit these days, but only managed to match the Naismith time rather than undercut it. I put this down to doing some of the northwest ridge, which the SMC guide describes as 'strenuous'. So there.

Some mist rolled over just as I got to the summit, so no panoramas from there, I'm afraid. Still, a good day out.

On the way back, I went into the Drovers for a pint. There was a time when this was a standard stopping-off point on the way back from weekends, but I've not been in for ages. It's much the same as it was, though the bar staff have less hairy chests, and whether the stuffed bear in the entrance is the same stuffed bear that I remember is hard to say.

A week ahead

My digital radio confused me this morning by changing from BST to GMT a week early. I spent some time resetting other clocks and watches, and then tut-tutted over the fact that my Mac hadn't got it right. Except that it had, of course. Clocks in the UK change next week. Is it just me, or is this information not communicated as much as it used to be? Maybe we now just expect clocks to have the computational power to reset themselves.

Day out

Last weekend's fix took place on the Moorfoot hills. Not exactly one of the greater ranges, but you have to use what you've got available. The Moorfoots form a boundary to the view when I travel to work in the mornings, filling as they do the gap between the well-known but flat Lammermuirs, and the popular and more eye-catching Pentlands. And some tiny fragments are visible from my flat. A while ago, I formed the idea of a Moorfoot traverse that joined the A7 to the A703. So that's what I did.

It was a day of wind generators, quiet backroads that you didn't need to share with much traffic, and quite a lot of dead things. As well as roadkill pheasants and a badger, I found a still-living lamb on the hill with its eyes pecked out. Enjoy the view.

That's Gladhouse reservoir with Arthur's Seat behind. There were Whooper swans on the reservoir, which (according to a passing birder) were in Iceland the day before. On the 62 bus home, an 82 year old called Irene filled me in on local gossip, how the trams were going, and what shops used to be on the site of the St James centre.

Doors Open Day

DOD continues to surprise me, usually in relation to things I thought I knew.

I saw inside the City Chambers for the first time: the 10 storey staircase, the view over Princes Street, the gaudy gifts presented by visitors and twinned towns. They have a great statue outside, of Alexander and Bucephalus, which is public, but I don't usually have a reason to pause there.Of course, the subject is reason winning over animal passions (the horse was afraid of its own shadow). No chance of a moral lesson will be passed up.

Best interior of the day was the Royal College of Physicians. Their main hall contains columns that are masterpieces of the decorator's art, made to resemble Sienna marble, and so good that they are probably worth more than the real thing. Two beautiful libraries too, filled with leather-bound volumes with titles that I could spend all day browsing through (The Atlas of Skin Diseases, anyone?).

Old job, new job

My current job is the sort where you can be very busy for a bit, then have nothing to do. For the last couple of weeks, things have been very thin, and I've been writing some training documents. As an ex-tech writer, this should be right up my street of course. To be honest though, the experience has made me glad that I (mostly) do something else now. Although I got some vague satisfaction from tracking down that comma splice, or systematically eliminating all passive verbs, my main feeling was of boredom. I mean, who's going to read this stuff anyway?

And today, I got to do some programming, which felt like a delight.

Dragonfly

Seen during my lunchtime walk on Friday. And just for once, I had a camera with me. And just for once, it settled on a tree trunk to have its picture taken. It seems to be a male common aeshna (Aeshna juncea). The female have dull green spots instead of blue.

xkcd hits the mark again

This is so true.