Frosty Nights, Sunny Days

(Written on Wednesday 1 March, posting delayed by me being too lazy to walk up the road to get a better wifi hotspot signal that night.)

It was a fine day on Monday, followed by a cold and frosty night.


Setting sun, lighthouse, Typhoon landing

We can readily bear frosty nights when they're sandwiched between glorious days, so we were happy to wake to more uninterrupted blueness yesterday.

Steaming mugs of tea/coffee awaited us as we arrived at Louise's (gemini-challenge.blogspot.com) house mid-morning and it probably goes without saying that those drinks were accompanied by much chatting. Thanks to some chivvying from Louise, and no thanks to some faffing from Mick (perhaps a grossly unfair accusation, but we will come back to this later) we did prise ourselves from the sofas and off we strode to sample one of Louise's regular walking routes.

Past a pond we went, where I paused to snap a poor representation of the scene before us:


Some bits of the route I recognised from a past walk, and all of it was lovely.

I had to wander off track to snap this machine

With lunchtime upon us, we shunned a perch on a shady rock, in favour of plonking ourselves down on the opposite side of the track in the sunshine - a good ploy until the sun went behind a solitary tree, only to re-emerge as we stood to move on (whereupon I also came to discover that the sit mat that I found on the Welsh coast may look the part, but it actually possesses no waterproof properties whatsoever).

Our lunch stop may not have boasted a view (except of gorse bushes, three feet in front of us), but by clambering up onto the shady rock we had shunned, I could see over the relatively young trees, to a view of the Moray Firth:

Despite appearances, Louise wasn't clapping!

Apparently I didn't take any more pictures after that point, even though we still had four miles or so to go. They were very nice miles, but I was probably too busy chatting.

Coming down the final undulation of the route, a couple of showers could be seen nearby and, alas, the five minutes of pre-walk faffing (for which Mick graciously accepted the blame that we unreasonably heaped on him) became important as that's how far from the end we were when a sharp haily shower hit.

The stats for the outing were 9.1 miles walked with an amount of undulations which I've not yet calculated.

Left to my own devices, I would have been completely oblivious to it being Shrove Tuesday yesterday. Louise is rather more knowledgable/organised and thus occurred the very rare event of Mick and I having pancakes on the appropriate day*.

We had intended to leave Louise in peace this morning, but a quick cup of tea with her morphed into taking advantage of another stunning day with a turn around another of her regular walking routes (which was partially a skating route in the iciness of the morning).

I tried to get a better shot of the partially frozen pond. I'm not sure I succeeded:


Today's main feature was passing the Mediterreanean-esque buildings which were disused and threatening ruin last time Mick and I saw them, a few years ago. They've now been done up and were set off nicely by the sunshine:


Pre-walk faffing had been kept to a minimum today, but it wasn't important as there was no hint of a rain cloud from beginning to end.

I've a feeling we covered the 5.25 miles at a good pace, but I've not yet downloaded the track I recorded (for which reason I'm also rather vague as to where we actually went).

We left Louise in peace at lunchtime and now find ourselves sitting with a cracking view of a snow-dusted Ben Rinnes. There are clouds about. It would be nice if they cleared by morning.

^{(*thank you for the hospitality Louise and David, not to mention Aedan for the skillful pancake making!)}