Barnbougle Castle, a liner and driftwood

Practising retirement again today, so leapt onto the bus to Cramond Brig and walked along to Cramond. On the bus, the Metro?s headline said that we?re going to have to share baths and have standpipes in the streets because of water shortage. They obviously hadn?t been standing beside the River Almond this morning, which was so full and fast that even the ducks were having a problem swimming upstream. A grey dipper went too fast for me to catch but a heron kindly posed in the river.

When I reached Cramond itself, the tide was way out, so for the first time since I moved to the Edinburgh area over 20 years ago, I walked out to Cramond Island. Great, I thought, I can get a blip of the Forth Rail Bridge form the island. Then I realised I could see the cruise liner form the causeway. Aha I thought, the bridge and the liner from the island in one blip!! And then a heron was there, and stayed there while I got my camera ready, and I blipped it. And I thought, heron and liner, and moved slowly to the side, and blipped them. Then I thought aha, the bridge, liner and heron ? and moved slowly further to the side and blipped them. But once I had the images up on the computer, they didn?t really work. Shame!

On the walk back up the River Almond, a heron flew in alongside me into the water and stood there looking at me expectantly. ?What are you like?? I asked. It didn?t actually reply in words but the body language was? I?m, like, a professional model, chuff-wit!? But I studiously ignored that and went to catch the bus home. Not looking for blips meant that I could concentrate on listening to the bird song, which was my excuse for going up the steps really slowly. Also I thought it would be a really difficult place for the emergency services to get to if I had a heart attack. Looking down into the river from the top, I caught a glimpse of a kingfisher. Another first, as I?ve only ever seen them before when out with eagle-eyed bird-watching friends.