The Walking Yew.

The Ormiston Yew is actually two trees, about 30 metres apart, surrounded by numerous layered clones of themselves. For a picture of the sibling, please click here.
The complex has the general appearance, from the inside, of a church with pillars of yew trunk supporting an arched ceiling; it may be a legend, but John Knox is reputed to have used it as such.
The walking phenomenon is due to successive generations of clones forming an arrangement similar to the familiar "fairy rings" that toadstools sometimes form. The original trunks are still alive though they are hollow, making it impossible to age them by "counting the rings." However, estimates of the age can be made both by measuring the girth and from historical records; these methods give an approximate answer of one thousand years; a mere youngster compared with the Fortingall Yew in Perthshire which is estimated as being between fifteen hundred and five thousand years old, with the favourite number being two thousand.

My next move was to have a coffee at the Ormiston cafe, it is part of the "Ormiston Grows" community enterprise which includes a garden producing fruit and vegetables commercially and the shop which sells them. It has similarities to the Penicuik "Lost Garden" project.
I was chatting to the proprietor as he stocks honey produced by the family of an acquaintance of mine, beefarmer George Hood, who died unexpectedly a couple of years ago. It is nice that the tradition is continuing.

On a cycle path near home, a small boy in a push-chair pointed at me and was making farting noises; it wasn't until I was passing him that I realised he was shooting at me with two fingers, had I realised sooner I would have returned fire - when I do it I even make ricocheting noises.