A Favourite Walk

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Around January I discovered a new walk near Dunkeld that quickly became a favourite way to spend a weekend afternoon. Starting from the Pass of Birnam, head up the track from Bee Cottage and turn left to go around the south side of Duncan’s Hill then rejoin the path up to Stair Bridge Viewpoint and the top of Birnam Hill.

As routes go, it gives a mixture of sheltered woodland tracks and sweeping landscape views, complete with my favourite feature – you can watch the rocks changing from till to slate to psammite and semi-pelite as you cross the Highland Boundary Fault. Small wonder I’ve done it half a dozen times dragging various folks along with me, gradually exploring further each time as the winter receded.

These photos are from an experiment with a Prakticar 24mm lens (M42 fit) – acquired for cheap from ebay and stuck on a wonky adapter which might explain some focussing issues. Several of them depict the line of the HBF through the landscape, with hills on one side in the Highlands and on the other in the Lowlands.

Changeable Weather

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A few photos from the start of January – experimenting with a road I’ve not often travelled, up from the A9 to approach from the south. It was a stunning morning – swathes of cloud-shadow flying across the landscape such that the mountains north of Comrie were alternately visible or obscured behind passing snow/hail clouds.

Ben Lomond

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Classic views – the familiar pointy triangular shape of a snow-covered Ben Lomond with its head in the clouds, from the Loch Ard Forest track

Festive spirit

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A carpark in central Leeds, one Sunday morning during Christmas 2014.
Which serves the public better – a traffic warden ticketing cars or the gritting of road and pavement so folks could walk safely along?

Perth Street Stories: groups

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Back in November, Perth council thought to hold a winter street festival – never mind that it wasn’t Christmas, Advent (at the time) or even winter yet, at least it was a good excuse to get folks tramping past the shop windows.

Herewith, a handful of street scenes – a little different for me – this time, groups of humans.

I didn’t rate the bell-ringers very highly; the slow and disjoint performance (only identifiable by the title on the sheet music saying “Jingle Bells”) served only to distract at close range from the pop-noise coming from a couple of large speaker-stacks a little further down the pedestrian precinct.

The End of the World

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It’s been a bit breezy the past couple of days – winds gusting over 50mph locally and up to 100mph nationally. Fortunately, the gardener has just finished staking all the trees that needed it, so the storms passed us by with no significant damage – the only loss appears to be this wooden trellis that’s blown over, with the honeysuckle creeper climbing all over it severed at the root. No sad loss, really, as I spent too much of the summer pruning the thing in an attempt to keep the walkway accessible underneath it anyway.