No white stuff at Christmas

The temperatures these last few days have been pretty mild, so no snow for us this Christmas. 

Colin came up for a visit last weekend, and wasn’t it lucky that I discovered my car’s flat tyre on Sunday,while he was around to fix it .

Off came the old tyre, and on went the spare wheel.

At least I had a spare wheel, as so many new cars these days don’t, I’ve heard!   (I took the car to the garage on Monday to get the old tyre replaced and ended up with not just the one, but two, new tyres.)  

The job done, we decided to take a walk along the river to see just how full it was.  From my windows it looked full enough!  It wasn’t as bad further along as I thought it might be.  Just beyond the swimming pool, the bank was well underwater, but the path was still clear.   

As for the cauld/ weir the water was really rushing furiously over it.

We followed the high wall  by the river to my favourite beech tree; up the steps; alongside Hay Lodge; down the next set of steps to where I expected to find water right across the path - but surprisingly the path was clear, albeit pretty muddy (the river must have come out but gone back again), so we were able to continue all the way up to Fotheringham Bridge (a gift by a former mayor of Johannesburg in 1953).  You can see the river is higher than normal with the bushes in the water. 

Once on the bridge you can look back to Peebles.  I often take this picture as you might remember!

Crossing the bridge then, we followed the raised path  along the other riverbank back to town. 

I was lucky enough to get this photo of a blackbird amongst the autumn leaves in the woodland, and a bit further downriver, in this flooded area……..

 

……Colin spotted these little guys dipping and diving.

By now the sky was darkening and rain wasn’t far away so we hurried on ….

….past the fishing platform, and the cauld,

back to Peebles.

It was just as grey in Peebles when I set off to Edinburgh to meet Linda on Christmas Day, but as we drove off to East Lothian for Christmas dinner at Dirleton, the sky brightened and the sun came out!  It turned out a beautiful day!  Linda and I have spent Christmas together for years now, always going out to eat.  I had my camera with me but didn’t take many photos….

……just this one of Linda taken after we’d had our dinner and were having coffee in the lounge.

If you were celebrating Christmas yesterday I hope you had a good time too.

Talk again soon.