I like to have some sort of objective in mind when I set out on a walk so, with the weather promising some sunshine after the miseries of yesterday - this is the A9 just after 9.00 yesterday morning - we embarked on what in the old days might have been called a 'nature ramble' - just a gentle wander looking for anything of interest, and....
....this track which leads up into the forestry and then on into more open moorland a mile on, is ideal for the purpose.
It was a typical fine autumn morning, chilly, with the leaves sparkling with last night's rain, and all sorts of things to find including....
....masses of berries on almost all the rowans, something which is supposed to herald a hard winter....
....and plenty of fungi including some fly agaric which the slugs and snails had yet to find, and....
....several groups of puffballs. Then there were what I take to be....
....the seed heads of bog asphodel, glowing in the low-angled sun.
Then there was the heather family. This is cross-leaved heath which has been flowering all summer, with....
....bell heather enjoying only a slightly shorter season - but what was noticeable was that the flowers of the ling, which are usually at their best in early September and then die off through into October, were absent, perhaps because conditions at the time of their flowering were either too dry or - and this is a possibility - rather too wet.
So we wandered until we came to this gate, which suddenly opened up the possibility of walking much further along the track to somewhere we hadn't been in ages.
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