Braving the Windy Weather (Backblip)

Granddog Oona and her humans arrived safely on Wednesday evening with no mishaps owing to the high winds, although they did pass a lorry on its side at one point on the A1.

Yesterday (Thursday) the wind was still rather strong, forecast to gust up to 40+ mph so in spite of Oona's love for the beach we decided that none of us wanted to be sandblasted. We therefore decided on a country walk. Our Daughter in Law had never seen Hadrian's Wall so we drove to Vindolanda and parked the car, giving us a bracing half-mile walk up the road against the wind to get us ready for lunch at The Sill tourist complex. However they won't allow dogs in (a bit odd in a tourist location, we thought), so unperturbed we popped along the road to the Twice Brewed Inn where they welcome dogs - and where they do fab paninis. Duly fortified we walked up the hill to Steel Rigg and along the ridge to Sycamore Gap. At this point, having almost been blown over a couple of times, we decided the beat a retreat back to the car and off home. We were having such a lovely family time I didn't get round to uploading my blip, so this is backblipped.

The main photo gives an idea of the rather gorgeous light to which we were treated, looking southwest from the top of the ridge: the white building in the distance is where we'd had lunch. The first extra shows Oona, with the wind blowing back the hair on her face, about to enjoy a treat for being a good girl. The extra shows Sycamore Gap itself as seen from the road back to the car at Vindolanda; you can see a bit of a remnant of Hadrian's Wall rising from the gap on the right of the photo. The sky looks a bit threatening, doesn't it? - well, it started to rain just after we got in the car. Perfect timing.

Not only was it lovely to be out in the fresh air, it helped us to forget the horrid news of what's going on in Ukraine.