Bigger beasts ...

Actually there was only one. In the field where a few weeks ago there was a whole little herd of Jacob sheep, only this fine male specimen remained this afternoon, and he was ready for company. Because my pal can't resist bonding with any creatures we happen to encounter, he was having his head scratched and one of his four large horns stroked (they're warm - who knew?) He had a very deep, loud voice and was very partial to individually proffered bramble leaves which were growing just out of his reach.

A walk up Glen Massan gave us time to catch up on the events of the past week while getting thoroughly soaked in a fine rain that was actually the mist that lay low over the hills. Down in Dunoon, there was only the suggestion of a smirr, but this was a great deal wetter. It was 21º when I got back to the car, but still damp.

We were both deeply scunnered to see that the verges had been cut back brutally, sacrificing a whole bank of wild orchids that we'd been admiring a week or so ago and destroying everything that had got in the way of the machinery. Worse still, they seem to have applied weedkiller to a whole strip of verge beside a field, so that the grass and all the bushes beyond it have gone brown and dead and completely hideous.

What happened to the idea of leaving it to the bees?