happy holyrood hogmanay hike

 

31st December 2023

The last day of the year. And a good way to spend it. Weather was looking bright so we headed up the Seat. We often visit here during the xmas* season but this year we had done a parkrun on xmas morning. (The second of the week following the usual Saturday one.) (Thanks to all the volunteers who get out of bed to go stand in the cold on our behalf, a chore I'm not sure I'd always feel up for if I wasn't running.) Anyway we hadn't been up towards the top of the hill for a while and an outing was overdue.

*Very much in the manner of a grumpy old man I refused to use the word Christmas this year, replacing it as far as possible with the word xmas, specifically with a lower case x. This mid-winter Bacchanalia of materialism, gluttony and alcohol poisoning, has zero associations with Christ as far as I can see, and although I am no great respecter of the baby jesus and his origin story, I think it is too obscene to take his name in vain and associate it with this repellent celebration of over-indulgence.

I feel humans are at their worst when decadence comes to town. It is what is ruining the quality of life on the planet, ruining people's health and shouldn't be welcomed with such abandon. Fair enough, cut loose and do 2 parkruns in a week, or jump in the Forth, or eat a big meal with your extended family (if you must), but spending money you don't have, on stuff you don't need... it is both the slippery slope and the highway to hell. And stop murdering trees and watching shit on the telly. While drinking yourself into a depressed, hungover, self-loathing, self-pitying mess. I have done a lot of these things in the past and it has taken a number of years to work out what is of value in life and what stinks - you'd think it was obvious, but it is not - so you might want to take a moment and reflect how you have behaved in the last 4 weeks and have a strong word with yourself. Or not. We are not great as a species for self examination and self-improvement. Just watch the news any night for examples. 

Piper's Walk

Okay, xmas lecture over. On a more positive note, and a very unexpected one, Historic Environment Scotland, the company that likes to fence off sections of Holyrood Park, has made a decent job of refurbing Piper's Walk. That's the path that runs from near the bottom of the Gutted Haddie and curves up towards the top of The Dasses. When they closed it off and dropped a hundred bags of helicoptered stones, I thought it will end up like the Gutted Haddie staircase: a decent path ruined with sharp edged, tooth-smashing, shin-barking boulders. However they widened the trail, edged it with stones and finished it with small grade gravel, only paving the steepest sections with stepped boulders. It has actually been improved. I was surprised and impressed. 

only the steepest sections paved and stepped

the sky brightened towards the top

We didn't go to the actual summit for obvious reasons. It is somewhat oversubscribed. You'd be hard pushed to hear a local accent up there though, as it is traditionally overseas visitors for the Scottish New Year queuing at the summit markers to selfy themselves. We went over to the subsidiary summit of Crow Hill to photograph birds. Often in the Winter there are wheatears, reed buntings, goldeneyes and stonechats around the park, but today there was mostly only crows.

hoodie / carrion crow hybrid

refugee from annual slaughter

After Crow Hill we wandered about Whinny Hill as there were fewer punters there and maybe that's where all the birds had gone. Nope, none there either. However it was all very pleasant in the sunshine. We then dropped down to Dunsapie Loch recalling the way the otter transformed things during lockdown and were the 2 things coincidence or one as the result of the other. We'll never know I suppose, if the lack of traffic made the otter's behaviour change. There wasn't much in the way of exotic on the loch but a family was feeding the mallards and black-headed gulls and so we stood near to get some pics. The low Winter light raised the ordinary subject matter to extraordinary and I took far more photos than required. When you get home you (I) often think if only I had that angle on that bird, or taken just one more shot in that sequence. So I was still shooting dozens of pics when Mary was well ready to move on and to consider the important matter of what to have for lunch.

mallard (m)

black-headed gull

tufted duck (m)

the tufted duck continually submerged and was only available
for about 3 photos every surfacing before diving again

mallard (f)

a time for reflection

BTW these photos were all taken with the bridge camera. I left the new camera at home and chose the bridge camera today because I knew there would be a greater call for scenery, portraits and wide shots than wildlife close-ups. And I couldn't be bothered swapping lenses back and forth in situ. The bridge camera has been performing in tip-top fashion lately, as if it had raised its game knowing there was a rival on the scene. 

That said I could have done with the new camera and the amazing way it identifies a bird surrounded by stems or branches and focuses on just that. We came upon a pair of stonechats. Or rather Mrs Stonechat flew in front of us and landed right there, clearly wanting her photo taken. (They are not the sort of species who recognise humans as a source of food, so it must have been the cameras she was responding to.) Anyway she gave us a few cute looks then flew off, over the road. I went off in hot pursuit while Mary was happy enough having got the requisite photos at the first stage. I think this underlines the difference between us. I am more dogged (or frenzied).

Sometimes this results in better photos but not always. Sometimes it just means a longer chase over fences and through brambles, tearing trousers and flesh, before giving up. Mary wandered slowly down the road affording me the time to clamber across the tussocky ground, take another dozen pics no better than the first, before running back to her side like an idiot panting dog who has chased the birds or squirrels but caught nothing.

Nice to see Janet out for a run just towards the bottom of the road.

Again I am reluctant to endorse the general banter of this season-of-stupidity by saying Happy New Year or any other scottished-up nonsense. Lums reeking etc. (WTF is Lang Syne?) And yet to fail to do so seems a scrooge-like parsimony. What is a person to do? I wish you well in your endeavours! and really do hope it does not get any worse. I mean it couldn't really, could it?

Our Dynamic Janet

waving byeee to 2023