A Mission

I got an email from Graeme, one of my readers, the other day.  “I've grown up in Canada,” he wrote,”but my mother is from Peebles.  When taking a trip back to Peebles with my parents a few years ago  I remember my mother getting weepy and commenting on the "lights of home" as we came around a corner approaching Peebles when we first arrived.”

Graeme asked me if I could take a photo of the view coming into town, for my Peebles blog,  so on Saturday afternoon Morag and I took a walk up the road towards  Neidpath Castle so I could take some photos.  I started with photos of the castle itself, a tower dating back to the 14th century.  I love this castle.   It has a small Great Hall with wooden panelling and a beautiful fireplace, and a couple of floors of what would have been bedrooms, before you reach the top floor with access to the balustraded ramparts.  There are great views from up there!  Below the entrance hall level is the dungeon and the guard rooms … and the huge well.  Pity it’s closed for the moment. 

Found some aconites along the driveway.

Turning back towards town again, I took a photo looking back into town – not such a great view, with too many sign posts and lamp posts, but I think this is the view Graeme is thinking of.  The tower at the bottom of the road is St Andrews tower, all that remains of the old church, with the graveyard round about it. The wall on the right is called Campbell’s Dyke – a dyke is a wall in Scotland, a ditch in England – but who Campbell was, I haven’t discovered yet.  On the left behind that fence is the new Kingsland School, just opened about a month ago.  Take a look at my other blog, Peebles for Pleasure for more about the school.

I have a lovely couple of  pictures to show you now, taken on Friday when Linda and I made our first visit this year to a garden centre!    This dunnock was perched on the helmet of a Japanese Buddha statue, and seemed quite unperturbed as I edged closer. 

 

In the end I was less than a metre away and was beginning to wonder if he/she was maybe injured, but after allowing me a great photo he/she hopped down to the ground behind the statue and disappeared.

Talk again soon.