Northward, for a change ...

R.S. Thomas, my favourite poet, begins his poem Reservoirs with the words "There are places in Wales I don't go." Well, I've realised we don't tend to go to Ardentinny, on Loch Long, in the winter, because it faces north and gets very little sun till it's higher in the sky. But today I was so fed up with our usual walks, and so keen to avoid people in the greater numbers that appear over the weekend that I decided we should forget about fabulous sunsets and have a change. 

As usual, it wasn't particularly early when we got out. We'd had Zoom church, we'd had coffee and chat (so tiring, really, talking online - it's the business of one voice dominating, isn't it, with noise used as a sort of placeholder), we'd had a rather delicious lunch (scrambled eggs with the last of some smoked salmon we'd been enjoying), there was my book ... But then we pulled ourselves together and arrived just as the sun was vanishing up the loch.

If you look at the hillside on the left, where it pokes out into Loch Long as if pointing at the nuclear submarine floating dock, you'll see the top end of the bald bit of hill where the forest has been harvested. There's a tree sticking up. We were there, some 40 minutes after I took this, and then we walked on for a bit until the untouched forest cut out the view. I'm going to squander another extra to show the view from that gap ...

By the time we got back to Ardentinny and the car, it was dusk. Seabirds were making gentle noises at the water's edge, but it was incredibly peaceful. It was also 2ºC. Time for dinner. And that too was delicious - Venetian style liver and onions, with Carluccio's Monk's Potatoes and oven roasted sprouts. Walking and eating. To that all life has shrunk.

I'll just do another Italian exercise before bed.