Five miles ...

In Scotland, the current let-up on lockdown measures includes permission to drive for exercise - but preferably remaining within a five mile radius of home. Today, having washed and dried two lots of towels, spoken to my pal and had messages delivered (no - not the BIG SHOP: that's on Thursday), we observed the subtle change in the weather and decided on an inland walk that we'd not done for weeks. That took us up Glen Massan, where I took several photos but felt more pleased with studies of rhododendrons than with any of the landscapes I shot. The bushes and trees seem to have grown hugely since our last visit, and I was particularly pleased to see that the birch trees scorched black in last year's bush fire had new growth on the upper branches. I was also pleased to see that the little handmade notices we'd seen on our last walk there, telling the world not to drive there to exercise, were gone. As we returned to the car, I looked up the distance to our house on Waze and noted it was actually 5.2 miles - not far off. It felt good to be able to leave our car parked beside the road without fretting.

I'll put up an extra of one of the rhododendrons growing by the road, but my main blip is my extraordinarily delicious dinner. Who would have thought that potatoes and beans would go so well in a pasta dish? Apparently we have the good people of Genoa to thank for this idea, which is spaghetti with home-made pesto (today's shopper brought me some basil), green beans, a handful of broad beans and a new potato, boiled and thinly sliced. There was butter and parmesan stirred in, and more parmesan on top, and the fragrance of garlic made me glad we were both eating it. It went terribly well with the glass of Italian red which happened to be our wine for tonight...