Abbey St Bathans

Yesterday we went for a walk on the hills above Abbey St Bathans in the Borders. The willow herb was in seed, contrasting fluffily with the rowans behind it. I'm so glad that none of these seeds is likely to fly as far as my garden. My mother always remembered willow herb covering bomb sites in London during the war. There must be thousands of seeds on each plant.

The first part of the walk was along a (deserted) road. We rather liked this exhortation to toot when rounding the corner.

Then we crossed a stream...

 ... and followed muddy paths, clearly used by many many sheep before us, through the bracken and up the hill ...

 
... to Edin's Hall, an Iron Age broch, or fort. (It was a long way for someone to climb just in order to scrape off the E and H from the notice. And why???)

The broch currently looks like this.

It may have once looked like this. Or possibly not.

And then we came down again

 and drove to Duns,

where we had coffee and cake ...

... and admired the very bright - if slightly random - floral arrangements. And paint choices. That blue was a brave decision... .