west beach in St Andrews, which won’t be the easy walk from the house, now that daughter’s household is moving further inland

there’s always a beautiful light here in the mornings. it’s reflecting off the caravan site on top of the cliffs.

jewel encrusted tidemark

at the new house you walk by the roaring burn and overhanging ash and oak next to the house, and if you head in the right direction you are out in fields and in a little tree-lined gorge after two minutes. a den, they call it in Scotland.

on Christmas eve we are climbing this steep hill in a rainstorm

mysterious calls among the trees prompt Scott to attribute the loss of an hour on the car clock (it’s set to summer time) to an alternate reality at the top of the hill.

Christmas Day and we are in Dunkeld, North of Perth, for a lovely long walk, a grey day, the landscape saturated;

my iphone finds saturated colour in the heather and bracken

and orange red larch needles – exaggerated, I have to admit

but intensely beautiful

navy and wine coloured

blue fir trees

Loch Ord, a pair of swans and their cygnet, but just one makes a better picture.

snow higher up

ash trees all rough with lichen

the snow is a way off, but many of the views as we come up a rise in the track seem to be on the next slope.

plenty of beech trees too, the climate here isn’t too cold for them.

reflections in the loch we circumnavigate to get back to the car.

Boxing Day it’s Tentsmuir forest and beach in blazing sunshine

soon sloping down

and on the horizon

two more photos, from Taybank, a very muddy walk along the north side of the river

above the reedbeds along a little cliff, in the grey murk.

Back soon.