Flooded road

Since I took yesterday's photo of Inverclyde Hospital I've been to Edinburgh,  done a necessary errand in George Street, stayed overnight, packed up again, taken my Newhaven family minus their dad out to lunch, and driven (or more accurately been driven) home through snow, slush and mist. And after all that we decided a walk would make us feel more awake ...

In the event the walk - chosen for its level and undemanding nature - turned into a bit of a scramble. The flood in the photo was too deep to wade without wellies, and was a completely new one as far as we could recall. It looks to me as if some work being done in the grounds by the new owners of Castle Toward has disrupted a water course, diverting a considerable quantity of water onto the land around the gates, where they've done a considerable and rather pointless-seeming amount of digging, shifting and wall-building. Anyway, today the water was pouring over the road, escaping onto the shore via a drainage channel through the verge.

My first thought was to try to bypass it on the beach, but the tide was in and after an injudicious scramble over greasy rocks and piles of seaweed I had to give up. In the end we squelched along the shore-side verge and jumped over the burn. And for the rest of the walk I reflected on the loss of elasticity in the knee joints and the unnervingly unspringy nature of my ankles, and on how in a past life I would have skipped over all these minor obstacles without a thought.

My additional photo is of a couple of swans taking their grown-up offspring for an evening swim along the shore ...