The north-east kitchen door

I've taken off the door into the hall and studied its lifetime biffs, scratches and worn-from-use details. I found Toad's planing tool that had been left in a boat to go rusty. He sharpened the blade and had a go at planing a little off the bottom of the door. It has been jamming on the carpet for all the time we have lived here!

Some details around the glass panels suggest that they were not always there but put in by a DIY-er wanting more light to get into the hall. The glass is firmly set but I've bought some putty to fill the gaps. When we put the door back I want to find a way of preventing it from banging against its jamb when it is shut in a hurry. Toad and Toadlet don't do gentle door shutting much and the old sprung catch (also not the original door closing equipment, I'm sure) didn't help. Over the years I've tied various bits of rag from handle to handle, after the fashion of those cushion things you can get so toddlers don't trap their fingers.

Why the hinges, which are designed to have four screws in each side only had three each is a mystery. One of those impatient to get the job done and then forgotten about necessary 'updates', perhaps? Some more age details below. The scratches were not by our cat (or chickens).

(We never had a cat!).

This is my favourite detail of, quite literally, wear and tear. I love the wood growth waves and I think the little worn indentations, which are near where the door handle was, have been caused by people's fingernails biffing the door while grabbing the handle.

Whoever woodstained the hall side of the door
didn't take the handle off when they did it.

It's not going to look like this when I've finished!
Note the string bag anti-slam device hanging from the handle.

Next up in the kitchen decorating saga is moving that bookcase and the shelf with the CD player.

Three grans on Clyde Walkway Stage 1

Two of us were coming from north-west and one from south-east of Glasgow Exhibition Centre. One of us thought we were meeting at the railway station, one of us thought we were meeting at the Exhibition Centre, and one hadn't a clue. We all got together eventually, not helped by text messages not arriving promptly, nor by one of us having forgotten to check she had LanarkshireGran's number on her new phone.

Exhibition Centre coffees and loos being sufficiently tested, we set off. Here is LanarkshireGran (LG) and LittleSheBear (LSB) in the foreground with the Finnieston Crane and the arc of Squinty Bridge (officially "Clyde Arc" Bridge but everyone calls it Squinty; this is Glasgow after all! 🙂) beyond. We set off eastwards. Below is the view looking back towards the BBC Scotland building and another arc: Glasgow Science Centre.

LSB

Looking back again to Squinty Bridge. The dome-roofed building to the left of Squinty is the southern Rotunda. There is another on the northern side of the river and a tunnel runs between them.

This link takes you to a page that has a good photo taken from above, of both Rotundas and Squinty, plus a bit of history.

Squiggley Bridge, Glasgow

Within minutes we had come to a dead end. Clearly my talent at homing in on dead ends has not diminished. Diggory would have been proud of me (Diggory was my old car many moons ago; he often led me on round about scenic routes and into dead ends). We could have walked back and around the building but we decided to climb over the fence, up a ladder and over another fence. LSB, being the youngest, led the way and hoiked LG and me over.

The next bridge along (yes, I love bridges!) is officially called the Tradeston Bridge. Unofficially – this being Glasgow, and there being a Squinty Bridge already when it was built – Squiggley Bridge.

Squiggley Bridge

And so we trundled along, enjoying the bright sunshine and light reflected off the river. The photo to the right was taken from the shade of the King George V Bridge and looking towards the second Caledonian Rail Bridge, the pillars of the first, four-track, Caledonian Rail Bridge and, furthest away, Glasgow Bridge which is also known as Jamaica Street Bridge.

Just beyond the Jamaica Street Bridge, on Custom House Quay, is the sculpture, La Pasionaria, by Arthur Dooley (1929-1994). The inscriptions below it say:

"Better to die on your feet than live for ever on your knees", Dolores Ibárruri (1895-1989).

"The City of Glasgow and the British Labour Movement pay tribute to the courage of those men and women who went to Spain to fight Fascism 1936-1939. 2,100 went from Britain, 534 were killed, 65 of whom came from Glasgow."

There were lots (lots!) of rowers on the river, and quite a few rowing coaches cycling along the walkway (which is also a cycle track) yelling instructions to the boats. The boats went by so fast I had difficulty getting a good shot of them.

Along the way someone had stuck feathers into the cracks where a tree branch had been cut off.

feather decorations

We crossed Shawfield Footbridge to eat our picnic lunches on the other side. Further inland from the footbridge is the Shawfield Greyhound Stadium. There is a good stretch of cleared land between the stadium and the river, which is presumably going to be developed at some stage.

When we had crossed back to the north side of the river, though after Shawfield Footbridge it was more like the east side because there's a bunch of big meanders at this part, I managed to get a shot of some of the rowers from a distance.

Strathclyde Public School, built in 1903, is near Shawfield Footbridge. The school closed as a school in 1974. Apparently it was reopened as a business centre in 1999.

The last old bridge in this post is the Dalmarnock Rail Bridge, seen here through the pillars and ironwork of an older rail bridge. The last new bridge is this one below that's so new it's not on the maps or Google yet.

A little before we crossed the river at Cambuslang we were reminded of the planet's plastic bag plague by this "plastic bag tree" on the riverbank. When the sluices at New Lanark are opened the river water level rises quite a lot. The low branches of this tree have snagged floating plastic bags.

LSB had researched the availability of refreshments at Cambuslang so we repaired to Morrison's Supermarket café for hot drinks and snackeroos.

Altogether a lovely day. The sun shone on us all the way and the low temperatures meant we didn't get too hot tramping along. We were also, of course, most congenial company for each other.

Watch this pace for accounts of our further trampings along the Clyde Walkway.

Car tumbles

On my way back from grocery shopping this morning, looking towards home across the water

Ice on the steep hill down towards the loch yesterday morning made me realise that BlueCar, which I'd left at the bottom on Thursday when it started to snow quite heavily, would not make it up to the house with the grocery shopping I was planning to do. I arranged with Toad that he'd come down in Rusty Trusty 4x4 Rattletrap to pick me and the groceries up from the bottom when I got back.

On my return I found our neighbour filling his wheelbarrow from the grit bin (that also resides at the bottom of the hill–what we call 'DTH': down the hill) and gritting the steep slope spade by spade. It seems his partner had 'totalled' her car during the week by skidding on ice along the shore road. Apparently her car ended up on its roof. I'd noticed some police tape on the seaward side of the road on my way round the loch and hoped the accident hadn't been too bad. Like my car wrecking somersault over the sea wall and onto the beach at Cove seven years ago, it seems our neighbour wasn't hurt but her car was!

It was after LucyCar's somersault that we got the Rattletrap. Gosh! it looked quite smart back then! Baboons tore off the spare tyre cover on a trip to Knowsley Safari Park several years ago when I was visiting the DerbyshireDudes.

LucyCar after her tumble. First pic was in a local newspaper. Toad took the others later. Thank goodness for seat belts, airbags and a sturdy car 'box' I say! Me, another mum and two young cub scouts were not hurt and there was another car load of scouts behind us. We were on our way (I was a Cub leader at the time) to a Thinking Day service at Craigrownie Church. The scout leader and his teenage son stayed with the car till the police came and emptied the contents of the boot and glove compartment into a bag. The Beaver Scout leader took the rest of us to the church where I was happy to sit among friends in a warm place for an hour or so. The police came and talked to me afterwards.

Thinking Day, 22 February, was the joint birthday of the founders of the Scout and Guide movements. This is what Wiki says: On the day, Guides and Girl Scouts everywhere think of each other and of their commitment to international friendship and understanding. It is celebrated each year on 22 February, which was the birthday of both Robert Baden-Powell and his wife, the former World Chief Guide, Olave Baden-Powell.

That year, 2010, Peninsula Guides had been collecting old, often chipped mugs in which they then planted miniature daffodil bulbs which were flowering by 22 February. They gave one to every scout and guide in the church. It was a lovely token of hope on a day that left me rather shaken. 

It was three years before I would drive at all when there was ice on the ground. It was a skid on ice that landed us on the beach; I had turned into the skid but then saw a hefty stone wall in front of me and reacted! On our side on the beach was the result. Not too bad a result all things considered. It was kind of the tide to be out! Rattletrap can cope with ice but even now I'd rather Toad did the getting down the hill to gritted roads bit when our hill is like this (I've 'smallened' some of them to make them fit better in a clump; you can click on them to 'embiggen' them if you want):

Winters with conditions like this are not common here but we've had two out of eleven and there are always a few days, often in February or March, when the postman doesn't deliver stuff because of ice on the hill. The last few days have been such but I met him DTH yesterday and he handed me our post. At times I've pulled my Kahtoola Microspikes over my boots and gone down with a sledge for stuff that was being delivered. Toadlet and I sometimes needed them when walking to her primary school one mile along the shore road.

New Year Larch Walk

I went for a walk in the woods up the hill. This is the view from just before I climbed over the fence with the help of my trusty sheepskin sit-and-kneel-upon-ery.

I follow deer trods because the undergrowth and general forest floor clutter can be difficult to negotiate.                                    →
I decided to head towards a group of larches that were in sunlight.

sunlit larches

                                                             And here we are.

From the larches it was possible to see the Sentinel from a different angle.

Sentinel from the larches
and looking to the head of the loch

On the way up I enjoyed some mosses and fungi.

In the mossy ground by the larches bilberry plants were growing. They seem to have been well-browsed by deer.










A few minutes after 11:30GMT, I took the photo below as I was setting off downhill again. See how low the sun is to the horizon even so close to noon.

Bye bye larches and sun

Level with Sentinel on my way down. I don't think the tree in the pic below is the same as Sentinel but I'm calling it Sentinel's friend or relation (as in Rabbit's friends and relations in Winnie-the-Pooh stories) until I find out what species it is.

Sentinel's friend or relation

I came across a small reddish pond behind the root ball of a fallen tree. There was the sound of a trickle into it but nothing obvious to tell me why it was so red. Something in the rock and the soil, I guess.

wee red pond

Further down there was another wee puddle-pond with something growing in it that I first took for young watercress. It does look refreshingly edible, doesn't it? I hope I can get an ID for it.

little plant in water

I found some Erica tetralix actually in flower! Woohoo! Finding flowers here in January is a Big Deal!

Down by the burn that runs along the 'back' of the forest fence, that is, on the forest side of the fence rather than the field side, I found a tiny beach to stand on while I listened to trickling water and watched bubbles forming under a tiny waterfall.

Then over the fence at a low bit among gorse bushes that I scrambled into to get a closer view of a lovely bright fungus on one of the branches. Thick old gorse branches are fine to grasp but the small prickles don't half snag your hat!

gorsey hat

By this time my hand-warmers had cooled down completely so I made my way across the field to the Boggy Brae's south corner. You can probably make out the numerous sheep trods heading in the same direction as I was.

animal trods leading to behind my garden

The south garden 'gate'. Just swing your leg over.
On my way down the garden I checked out one of my baby beech trees and some sedum shoots.

baby beech in the west corner

 Shoots of the sedum I protected from deer last year.

At this point a slight smirr started so I was home with perfect timing.