So it's February, and that means its time for the first post about something I did in 2016! In fact, pretty early in 2016, on the 2nd of January to be precise. As regular readers know, I have spent a lot of my time in the UK in Scotland over the last few years, and I always make sure to be there for New Year's. Long running traditions are a must if you want to be able to catch up with people, as they can rely on where to find you! This year was great as I was able to catch up with some old friends who had been off celebrating New Year's somewhere else in previous years (heresy!).
Despite the overwhelmingly rainy theme of the current British winter we were even able to find a nice-ish day on which to head out of Glasgow on the train and take in the scenery of Loch Lomond, our first hello to nature of 2016. I'd last made this trip two years ago at around the same time of year, and so I decided to lead my companions along the same trail I took back then.
This time the weather wasn't quite so clear and a thick grey ceiling of clouds hung over us, albeit relatively high up, allowing the sun, already nearing the horizon even as we arrived, to light up the view to the west with subdued yellows, then oranges, then purples. The thick green carpets of moss remained unchanged, covering fallen tree trunks, branches and drystone walls alike. As we made our way along the extremely muddy path we alternately tiptoed and jumped our way between islands of wood and solid ground between the rich black mud and murky puddles.
We got a lot farther than my previous trip, but a mystery remains for next year as my (utterly uninformed) insistence that continuing to follow the path might eventually lead in a circle was wisely ignored by my companions. As we retraced our steps dusk fell, the sliver of sky visible below the clouds out to the west colouring the whole view across the Loch a subtle purplish-blue colour. Accompanied by the squawks of hundreds of crows (or other corvids), at this point just silhouettes against the darkening sky, we retreated to the pub for a pint and some chips in good British fashion.
Click the link for the small gallery of Loch Lomond photos, many of them taken in the twilight towards the end of the walk!
Hope you have had a good start to the year and bis bald,
der Tom
