The Solstice

It was the summer soltice yesterday. Ancient tradition dictates that we should have been dancing naked around our Beltane fires and running off into the undergrowth for nookie.

As it was, everything was so wet you wouldn't get a fire to light with anything less than a napalm bomb. And it was so cold that any nude gyrations would have been more likely to have resulted hypothermia and a hospital bed rather than bliss in a thicket.

Check out the pic of the river that I took this morning. That kind of says it all.

When the weather is like this at this time of year, we try and keep off the hill. The last thing you want to be doing is disturbing sheltering grouse chicks.

So I've been catching up with more odd jobs. A bit of fencing here, a bit of road work there. I've even repaired the footbridge support that was washed out 18 months ago. After this latest spate, I hope it's still there!

Another pic is of a rather bedraggled woodcock sitting on its nest. It still managed to look miserable despite having an expressionless face.

It occurs to me that woodcock are usually early nesters so perhaps this is a second brood. If that's the case I hope the first brood were reared successfully. There certainly shouldn't have been any problem with conditions being too dry for them to find a worm.

I spat the dummy yesterday afternoon and fell back on my 'inclement weather last resort' job; reloading bullets. I had a heap of cases already prepared so I managed to get 100 done in the course of the afternoon. All the time I was sat in front of the workshop window, watching the rain battering down.

And, try as I might, I couldn't bring myself to feel guilty about it.