Showing posts with label hills. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hills. Show all posts

Tuesday, 19 February 2008

Kneeling Goats and Mossy Kettles


THESE BRIGHT DAYS have called us outdoors into the hills ... We have walked lots of miles carrying just a camera and a bag of raisins, and not met a soul ... and we have looked in the sunny haze across these beautiful hills. I take this scenery a little for granted nowadays, but remember happily my openmouthed delight at this landscape when I arrived here from London nearly a year ago. I longed then for this kind of wild and find now it is strange how accustomed I have become to it. Nevertheless we do live in a wonderful corner of Scotland don't we?

So we walked and we walked and one day we found a old kettle full of moss, and we wondered how it got there and who the people were who last made tea in it. Perhaps they were lead mining up in these hills and had stopped for some lunch?
Today we came across some kneeling goats and they let me draw them for a while. I don't know why they were kneeling, but it meant they stayed nicely in the same position for some time. I am out of practice and the results aren't great, despite the muddy addition of pawprints placed there by a wagging rabbit-chasing little dog on his way past, but I spent a lovely while with the goats who nibbled me and chewed their cud, blinking at each other in the evening sun.