Walking the Tweed

Well! We've had the most tremendous palaver to write this blog post, and I'm sure it's not worth it, but if you're reading this at all - goodness me, you nearly weren't. 

To go back a bit - part of this is due to our (well, my) having decided that to use a single bedroom as a study only was a bit of a waste. We do have four other bedrooms, but with two distant offspring plus partners and three distant grandchildren (the Edinburgh ones don't have to stay the night), these aren't really enough - and that's not mentioning my brother and his family, who come sometimes from Surrey. So I thought maybe if we did away with one of the desks and desktop computers in the study, we might squeeze in a single bed, which would help, if only marginally. 

(How do people manage to downsize? We need to upsize. Anyway... .)

One thing we would need to do, with only one desk instead of two, would be to share a desktop computer, and since Mr L's is newer and faster, this would be his. BUT I like to use Picasa for my photos and this is apparently ancient technology, which wouldn't work on his computer. So SIL 1 and Mr L have been trying to teach me Google photos and show me how to use these on my blog. Which seemed to work, but when I did it, the photos appeared on my computer screen in my blog, but nowhere else. Mr L then worked out that it was because I hadn't saved them on my computer, but only in the cloud or something, in which only I had access to my photos. So Mr L then saved them to my computer, put them in my blog post - and they were all in reverse order. 

After much experimenting, he managed to work out how to get them in the right order but - really! 

I feel there should be a special circle in hell devoted to young men (or indeed women) in California who muck up systems which work perfectly well for elderly ladies because they need to justify their enormous salaries. I also feel this about complicated cars. We have cars. They work. Why mess with them, apart from making them less polluting (which I'm fine with)?

The chaps also kindly swapped me to New Blogger (again, what was wrong with the old one? - but it seemed inevitable) so there's another possible way for me to get things wrong. We'll see. 

Anyway, yesterday we drove down to Peebles, 45 minutes away, to get a change of scene. It's a pretty little town but we didn't go into it, except to park. Instead we went for a 5-mile-ish walk up the River Tweed, across it and back down the other side. 

We passed Neidpath Castle, built in the 1260s. It's owned now by the Earl of Wemyss (pronounced Weems) and March. You can hire it for your film or wedding, should you wish to pay for the privilege. As you can see above, it's built at the top of a steep slope down to the river, and I wouldn't have liked to be the 13th century builders who balanced on (I assume) wooden scaffolding held together with ropes while constructing it. But it still seems to be standing. 

So we wandered happily along the river, and eventually...

crossed the Old Manor Brig (bridge) built in a relatively recent 1702. It's quite high above the river and again, I wouldn't have volunteered to be among the building party, especially as the roadway slopes quite steeply up from one side to the other. However, it still feels very solid, which it wouldn't if I'd built it. 

Then we climbed up steeply. I don't know why this photo is so blurry, since it wasn't originally (sigh, grinding of teeth) but anyway, this is where we had our lunch. The view was lovely but there was quite a chilly wind, up this high. 

The countryside was quite autumnal, with (I think) knapweed, 

haws on the hawthorn, 

and hips on the rose bushes. 

I recently noticed a comment from Doll in India, who says she's been reading this blog since about 2007! This is very astonishing. A long-service medal is winging your way, Doll. 

So... this post has taken my two assistants and me a total of about five hours to do - never was so much effort expended by so many people for so little point - but anyway, here it is. Thank you for reading this far. Now I'm off to have a coffee.