The other side of the tracks...

Can't believe we've reached the end of Blip pal xrayspex's visit.  Still reeling from the fact it took a visit from an Englishman to bring some sunshine :D

A relaxing morning for me while D and P took Lola on her morning walk to Blackford.  Lola has loved having P here and D has enjoyed the company on their morning walk.  Lola of course returned soaking wet!  P got some lovely photos of her that let me see how she managed to get into that state!

P gathered his stuff after we'd had a right hoot at him taking his glasses off and saying to D "are these yours?"  D had lost a pair of specs yesterday (as he does numerous times a day!) then couldn't find them despite re-tracing his steps round the house, turns out P mistook them for his specs and had been wearing them!  Hahahahaha...think he was relieved that a few days in Scotland hadn't affected his eyesight as much as he thought it had!

Decided to go out for lunch and went back to one of our old haunts that we haven't really been back to since lockdown ended - Broadslap Farm Cafe.  Drove the backroad to Dunning to let P see the monument to local witch Maggie Wall.

Had a lovely lunch and managed to resist the delicious looking home baking.  D and P did not so I did have a little mouthful of D's Victoria sponge and very lovely it was too.  Blip taken from the drive up to Broadslap.  Can see the heather burning on the hills.  

From there it was on to Stirling to drop P at the train station to catch his train to Glasgow, where he will spend the night before flying home tomorrow.  Thanks to a final pat of Lola before he left the house, he will arrive home with lots of her golden glitter stuck to his clothes.  We really should have given him the sticky roller treatment before he left!

From there we headed to Dobbie's Garden Centre for a nosey.  It was having an identity crisis with loads of halloween goodies on display at the same time as numerous assistants were filling shelves with Christmas stock!  Some scary creatures around too (see extra :-)

Back home and into the garden to collect a lupin stalk that was full of seedpods that I spotted last week.  Pal LeeAnne wanted some lupin seeds but the main clump was cut down after flowering before I got the chance to gather the seeds.  Thankfully a little rouge flowerhead popped up much later in the season, so that has allowed me to keep my promise :-)

Inside for a snooze some photo editing (I've used the big camera more the last three days than I have in the last six months!) before dinner of last night's left overs and an Empire biscuit (since I resisted cake at lunch time :-)

It's been a lovely week :-))

Hope you have an easy journey home tomorrow P.  So lovely to meet you at last!  Thank you for your company (and all the lovely gifts, especially the calendar :-) and for getting us off our backsides the last few days.  Oh, and for bringing the sunshine! :-) x