Rising above it all ...

Not that I manage to do what the title of this suggests - I can barely drag my head above the metaphorical parapet most days - but every day brings the confirmation that there's no situation that isn't remedied for me by a good walk. Sounds crazy, put like that, but the effect of endorphins and sunlight on my psyche as well as on physical health is remarkable.

This afternoon we headed out of town up the back road, passing the track to the Bishop's Seat up which we climbed a few weeks ago now, and walking on till we had a view south to the island of Bute and beyond to the hills of Arran, once again lightly dusted with snow on their northern aspect. (Extra photo). I felt my Fitbit pass the 10,000 steps mark well before we'd reached that point, and my multi-sprained ankle was complaining at so much uphill trudging, but it was worth it - I'd never been on this road before. (It's there to take timber out of the forests to the south without having to use the main road)

The silence was palpable. The wind had more or less vanished; we stopped and listened to the sound of nothing. But joyously, it was broken on several occasions by cuckoos - not one, but three at least. We even saw two of them fly past below us - they're unremarkable birds - but we couldn't help laughing at one of them whose song was a variant on the minor third that the others were repeating. This one sounded like a chorister who can't quite make the top notes but launches him/herself at them in a reckless fashion and just misses ... Esoteric hilarity for musical types. We also saw a buzzard, gliding.

I'm blipping the view as we headed back down. The Firth of Clyde is laid out like a portion of these maps you used to see in railway stations, advertising the possible routes to the delights of the Clyde resorts and the steamers linking them. Dunoon is in the centre; if you look carefully you'll see a church spire to the right of the town, just above the dark of the forest. Our house is close to that church. We had quite a long walk home.

We saw the naval ship from last night's Blip, grey rather than white in the changed light, heading south; a slow transport plane passed northward below us without a sound. For almost the whole time we were up there we were utterly alone, although the one person we passed close to was someone we've known for years, coming down off the Bishop's Seat. 

Social distancing? Cracked it.