Whalebacks

I've been waiting for a morning like this for months, when low-lying mist fills the valley below Arnside Tower Farm. I misjudged the sunrise, and when I arrived the sun was already well up. However, the bright low light was giving unusual hues to the mist and the wooded whaleback hills. I couldn't wait around to see if the mist would do what it sometimes does: roll up the valley and envelope the farm leaving the old Piel Tower standing above it.

We were back from the Cairngorm trip late last night after a roundabout route home that took in Inverness and Loch Ness. So there was no time for sorting photographs and backblips. Tonight the PC won't allow me access to the internet, and I've had to find a way round that. It means that time is too short now to put on the 4 backblips from Glen Feshie, and I will return to them tomorrow.

The weather was extraordinary. The Cairngorms are our nearest thing to an Arctic waste in Britain, yet we were on the tops of mountains in T shirts and shorts, and it was so easy to forget that it is still March. This time last year we camped in Glen Derry, and one of the blips shows Loch Etchacan covered in ice and surrounded by a corrie wall that was deep in snow. And while we cannot complain about how the weather treated us on this trip, is this just another aberration that demonstrates how our climate is becoming more unpredictable as temperatures rise?

Coming home it has been striking how much change there has been in just four days. The buds have burst on the birch trees outside the office, suddenly our tulips at home have come into flower and the house sparrows are mating and taking nesting material into the box.