Walking along the Braid Burn

We had a lovely walk today around Blackford pond, past Midmar Paddock and Blackford Hill and into the Hermitage of Braid. 

Blackford Pond was sparkling in the sunshine 

Sadly we only saw one clump of frogspawn, usually this is a great place for frogs to breed. The lack of spawn this year may have something to do with the fact that the pond has been badly flooded recently with the combination of a lot of heavy rain and blocked drains around the pond. 

The gorse is starting to bloom all along this walk, including this bush at the edge of Midmar Paddock

 

The Hermitage is very green at the moment, with both wild garlic and wild leeks coming into leaf, at this stage it can be difficult to tell the difference between the garlic and the leeks, though the garlic has thicker leaves.

The Braid Burn flows at the bottom of a valley, it's quite an impressive site to look upwards into the trees that line the valley