Grey Heron

photographed in Brodick, Isle of Arran

for Sunday Bridges

Summertime

Yesterday Edinburgh had the most amazing thunderstorm that lasted a total of two hours, the storm spent that time circling the city and throwing thunder, lightning, torrential rain and hailstones at us.

Today we foolishly thought the rain might hold off for the Canal Festival. We made our way over to the canal and enjoyed looking at the stalls and the animals that Gorgie City Farm had brought along for the petting zoo (though Driftwood, the rabbit who we have sponsored for the last few years, wasn't there).

We then wandered along the canal and enjoyed watching the swallows swooping low over the canal and lots of swifts flying around higher up. There was a family of swans, with the cygnets definitely at the ugly duckling stage of development, thgh the adults looked magnificent.

I managed to capture some nice abstract type reflections in the water.

It really felt like summer and we got quite far along the path. Until it started raining. Torrentially. So we turned back. But we took some photos of the rain too, just to prove how torrential it was.

so that's summer in Scotland!

for Weekend Reflections and Nature Notes

As ever, text in red contains hyperlinks which take you to otherwebpages where you can find out more.

Mooncup Madness

(Men may prefer not to read this post)


I have long thought about buying a Mooncup. They are the ultimate in environmentally friendly sanitary protection - avoiding the waste that you get with tampons and normal towels and not requiring the huge amount of water that seems to be necessary to launder reusable cloth towels. Plus the Mooncup doesn't have the health risks attached to tampons.

So the Mooncup would be ideal. But I have always had visions of wrestling with a full Mooncup and ending up with blood spattered all over the bathroom on a regular basis. Plus although the Mooncup isn't actually expensive (it costs about £20) that is expensive compared to what you pay per month for regular sanitary protection. And I've never wanted to have to pay that knowing that I'd be needing to buy my usual protection for at least a few months before getting the hang of the Mooncup.

Anyway, I won a Mooncup in a competition on Greener Leith, which recently ran a series of blog posts about the advantages of Mooncup. So now I have no excuse to at least try and part of the deal is that I write about my experiences here.


Well, my period started just before we went to Arran. I didn't want to take the Mooncup on holiday with me, not wanting to end up spattering blood over a beautifully decorated B&B bathroom. Plus the advice is that you try the Mooncup for the first time halfway through your period. So that didn't give me much time.


I tried, I really did, but the Mooncup was resistant to my efforts (it seems quite springy and its tricky to get it folded down whilst getting oneself into the right position). I did manage to fit it once but then after I'd emptied it, it didn't seem to want to go back in. I'll try again next month and see what happens. I'll keep trying for a few months, but doubt I'll have the staying power of the women in the menstrual cup discussion forums, some of whom have tried for two years before they felt comfortable with it. (This discussion forum is actually a good place to find out more if you're wanting to start using a menstrual cup.) I suspect Mooncup isn't for everywoman, but it is worth a try, as it is environmentally so much the better option and will in the long run save you quite a lot of money.

As ever text in red contains hyperlinks which take you to other webpages where you can find out more.

Evening Sky

I'm looking out of the window of our third floor flat. The windowsill is green and sweet scented with coriander and basil plants and a crooked cactus with the remains of some flowers hanging off it.

It's very warm, even though it's late in the evening and the windows are open.

The sky is hazy evening blue with wispy clouds above the tenements, chimneys, roofs and tv aerials. Seven swifts fly low above the old school building. Two of them fly on over our roof and out of sight, screaming as they go. A herring gull flies past.

There's the sound of traffic from the nearby main road and a loud conversation going on outside the restaurant on the corner.

Three gulls fly past, calling loudly - one of them lands on a chimney and shuffles around for a bit before taking off again. Suddenly there's a lot of gulls calling.

A group of ten swifts chase each other across the sky, but they're harder to see now in the fading light.


Written on Monday evening for It's all Around You for 26n

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I've had a few poems published recently, you can read them by following the links below:

Dreamscape and Deepest, Darkest on Pygmy Giant

Abstract on The Camel Saloon

I've also posted a poem Strangers on Over Forty Shades

and if you're in London on 31 July you can have the opportunity to eat one of my haiku in cupcake format, thanks to the ever delicious Poetry Digest.

As ever, red text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.

Black Guillemot

The black guillemot is a lovely seabird that particularly likes Scottish harbours. The only places we've ever seen them are the harbours at Oban; Ardrossan (on the way to Arran) and Brodick (on Arran). As well as the smart plumage you can see in the photo they have lovely red legs and a red gape. We enjoyed watching them swimming around and chasing each other as we waited for our ferry to take us back from Arran. Hopefully if you click on the photos, you'll get a bigger version.

for World Bird Wednesday and Watery Wednesday

Glenashdale Waterfall

As I said yesterday, Glenashdale Waterfall on the Isle of Arran is stunning! We hadn't had much of an idea about it before we went on the walk, we just like woodland walks and waterfalls are always a bonus! The walk from Whiting Bay to the falls is wonderful and very interesting (there's also the remains of an Iron Age Fort perched on a rocky outcrop in the woods). The woodland is lovely, we even saw yet another spotted flycatcher, a bird that we've seen a lot of over the last couple of weeks, despite previously having very rarely seen them (and sadly they are one of the many declining British birds).



The falls are very dramatic.

And at the top there is a wonderful peaceful pool with a miniature waterfall and rocky areas with ferns and even a common spotted orchid! (I shared photos of common spotted orchids near the Water of Leith in an earlier post). This area unfortunately was a mass of biting midges, otherwise it would have been a wonderful place to have a picnic.

I wrote a review of this walk for Walk Highlands, which you can read here. On the same site I've also written reviews of:

Lamlash to Brodick -

Blackwaterfoot and Kings Caves -

Brodick Castle grounds and Nature reserve

(As ever, text in red contains hyperlinks which take you to other webpages where you can find out more!)

Arran

We had a lovely holiday on the Isle of Arran, off the west coast of Scotland. It's probably the most accessible of the Scottish Islands, just a few hours by public transport from Edinburgh and the trains and ferries are timetabled nicely together. Once you get there, there's a regular bus service that takes you all round the island. (I definitely recommend buying a day saver bus ticket and spending the day on the bus, getting off where-ever looks interesting!). Arran is often described as Scotland in miniature and it really is! There are mountains, lowlands, beautiful beaches, wonderful waterfalls, red deer, seals, a wonderful selection of birds, golf courses with good provision for nature, a castle with beautiful gardens and a nature reserve. The photo below shows Goatfell the highest mountain on Arran, taken from the beach at Brodick.

We stayed in Brodick, at the Glenarty, a small Bed and Breakfast Hotel with excellent environmental credentials and beautifully decorated (though small) rooms with views across to Goatfell.

The Arran Brewery, near to Brodick Castle, brews one of my favourite beers (Arran Blonde) and also has a lovely beer garden, overlooking a field where spotted flycatchers spend their days catching flies (hadn't seen this bird for years until our recent day trip to Biggar and here they were again in Arran!). We also saw the flycatchers nest in a hole in a wall and also saw house martins' nests under the eaves of the brewery building. (Normally I would put hyperlinks here to the appropriate pages for martins and flycatchers in the RSPB website, but currently if I try to access the RSPB site my computer crashes! Sorry about that!)

The Glenashdale waterfall near Whiting Bay is stunning and I'll blog about that tomorrow!