high

No chance of a lie in this morning - I was booked into a workshop called "Writing the Landscape", part of what I had spent my birthday money on from Mum and Dad (the other half being the Goddess workshop at Tynron). 

The workshop was held at Shambellie House. It was here that our HND group had an exhibition back in 2016; now the house is a venue for courses on photography, quilting, painting and writing. It has a dark room in the basement and there are plans for a cafe. It's a beautiful place in which to be creative.

Local author Stephen Rutt was our tutor for the day; I had recently read his second book "Wintering" about geese on the Solway. What a nice man he turned out to be -  very relaxed and encouraging, which helped me to overcome my initial nervousness at being exposed as a rookie writer (Blip is the only writing I've done for ages, apart from the occasional article for the Dunscore Digest). I even agreed to read aloud my efforts to the others in the class, and feel inspired to carry on with what I have started :-)


While we were writing away, a lovely blue sky appeared through the windows of the house and I decided to go for a walk before heading home. Not quite enough time for Criffel, so I went up to the Waterloo Monument. The extra photo shows the monument from below, the main one is the view from the top - an exhilaratingly airy perch!