Nine Ladies Dancing

Jan 2, 2022 | Dead Water

Gormless

I closed out 2021 on this site with a diabetes update. I decided against doing any kind of end-of-year round up because, even with a blog to help me remember, the year has been a bit of a blur.

My 2022 started with a decent walk to Roseburn then along the Water of Leith footpath. I’d planned to go to Dean Village, but the path was closed for maintenance. I enjoyed it as far as I got. No otters or kingfishers this time, but a heron looking for fish and frogs just by the Antony Gormley statue at the AIDS memorial. A passer-by told me it was one of the best places in Edinburgh for wild swimming, and I decided to take him at his word without testing it out. Later, at the Murrayfield outflow of the Stank (an old, possibly ancient, drainage ditch that runs underground from the Gyle to Murrayfield), several goosander congregated.

I enjoyed the walk – or maybe it’s better to call it a stroll. It let me stretch out my legs and gave me a chance to check my boots were still in good order. I suppose that I could overlay some symbolic significance of starting the year how I mean to go on, blowing away the dust of 2021 or some such, but that would be too fanciful. It did tell me that, if I have ambition to get back to longer walks, I need to do some work on stamina when wearing walking boots.

I also came away from it with quite a lot of writing cues in my notebook. Not all of them will turn into stories, but that’s OK – a good paragraph to have on file for later use is perfectly acceptable.

Meantime, yesterday was the warmest New Year’s Day in Scotland on record – 15.9° at Achnagart (Glenshiel) and 14° here. There is Arctic air on the way later this week, apparently, but at present we have warm air coming up from the Azores.