Around and about

As there hasn’t been a great deal of activity on my part recently – largely due to problems with shoulders, knees, hips, teeth….. oh, the joys of getting older -  I thought I would just show you some mostly unrelated photos I have taken recently.

We had a spell of beautiful weather in March; it got colder in April, but one fine day brought a youngsters’ athletic group out to the Green for a training session. However the sun didn’t stay around for long and one day we looked out onto hills covered in snow!  Happily the snow didn’t linger long either and soon the hills were green again.

 

One good thing about the pollarded and trimmed trees is that I can actually see the hills – and the beautiful cloud formations!

I can always see the river though, and the people who use it for sport – canoeing and fishing for example.  This guy looks quite nonchalant, standing on the edge of the river bank with his hands in his pockets, but if you enlarge the photo (by clicking on it, as usual) you should see that he has a rod, and is in fact doing a spot of fishing!   

 

 

I went up to Eddleston to meet Linda for lunch one day – was that before or after I had the toothache?  After the tooth was pulled, I think -  The old farmhouse behind the cafe, each of which stand on either side of the Old Edinburgh Road, has recently been sold and the new owners are working on a bit of refurbishment.  I love the old house, but was more than a bit concerned to see that the little group of trees in front of the garden had been chopped down and much digging with JCBs was taking place.  It looked like foundations for new buildings were planned.  Hmmm!  The ladies in the cafe said it was supposed to be for a septic tank.  Don’t you need a deep hole for a septic tank?  This was a long area dug out of the hillside and partly levelled.  It was about the size of a decent house. Oh well, I had better get up there and take a picture of Brown Dod, the hill behind the “plot”, before it disappears behind a building.  Maybe there are farm buildings going up.  As I know to my cost from my days living in the Yorkshire countryside, these are not subject to the same planning rules as domestic dwellings…… Well, we’ll wait and see!

Meanwhile the daffodils on the old roadside continue to bloom.   Living in the centre of town, with restrictions on car parking I have to park the car wherever I can find a space - in a nearby street or sometimes in a car park.  It’s a pain in the neck – or should I substitute hip for neck in this instance, as I can never remember which spot I have left the car at!!  This time I drove round a few of my favourite parking places with no joy, but eventually found a space in the car park near the swimming pool!   (It has only just occurred to me that I will have a parking penalty on it by now!  Oh bummocks! Today is Saturday and that’s the only day the council charge for parking in several of the town car parks, the swimming pool one being one!!  Oops! No! wait a minute!  Didn’t I go out again in the car? …… Yes, I did, and then I parked at the back of the Co-op, on the roadside, not in a car park at all!  Whew!)

 Anyway, the picture on the right, is of the blossom in front of where I parked the car in the car park! 

Then I took the pathway between the Cuddy Burn and the old castle hill to get back to the High Street  The elevated construction ahead is what has been nicknamed the pathway to heaven!  The parish church could only be accessed by the stone steps from the end of the High Street, so it was decided a couple of years ago to build a wheelchair access at the side of the old courthouse building, and along the back of its yard to the rear of the church next door.  This is it!  I suppose it doesn’t look too bad from this path, but from the road it looks a perfect eyesore – and the laugh was that it wasn’t suitable for wheelchairs when it was finished!  The gradient was too great!  It’s supposed to have been fixed now, how I don’t know, but I’ve still never seen it being used!  Personally, I wouldn’t want to cross it, in or out of a wheel chair.  I’m not afraid of heights – it just looks too flimsy to me, it being made of wood rather than steel! 

   Just before the steps to the road, I stopped to take a photo of the fake bridge.  Fake?  Yes, well it is a bridge, but it wasn’t built as an arched bridge . Underneath you can see a flat wall. The arches, this side and the other, are what you might call cosmetic!

Anyway, I was almost home.   That’s my house facing us.  The view to the river is from the other side.  My neighbours at this end of the path  have done a lot of work on their garden and have these pots of flowers, one on either side of their gate. Pretty!

On the way down the path I pass Heather’s garden on my left.  

It’s full of beautiful flowers – tulips at the moment.  My tulips aren’t in flower yet!  So, back home again.

One more photo I must show you is of the Parish Church  taken  one evening during the week  The sun lit up the clouds in a beautiful sunset.

So maybe I’ll have an adventure or two to write about soon, but in the meantime I hope you’ve enjoyed some views of Peebles.

Talk again soon.