No Bovine's At The Black Loch !

The festive holidays have been a real pain for me as yet again I've been more or less laid up with sciatic back pain & have really struggled to do the simple day to day stuff like put on socks ! 
But however it is the season to be jolly & my doctor helped me out there with a concoction of pain killers & drugs to ease the excruciating pain, and with the pain eventually subsiding or being masked by the effects of the drugs, I was able to finally get out on my bike...Hooray :-)

So on Monday morning with a trail battle plan in mind to visit the Black Loch up by the Halls farm I set of on my merry way...

I decided to cycle along the Thurston Glen as once you are through the caravan park the glen is relatively quiet & often a good place to see the resident wildlife.
 So through the Thurston Manor caravan park I went & as I cycled  down the steep hill into the glen the first thing to catch my eye was a cormorant sitting perched high up in a tree scanning the pond below which is stocked with rainbow trout, easy pickings for a cormorant.

 A new edition to the ponds edge, this sign informing the residents to respect the nature that lives here. I see it all the time at trout fisheries, fisherman leaving old fishing gut, litter & even beer cans at their feet & there are more often than not plenty of bins for them to put their rubbish in, but it must take too much effort to walk a few feet to bin it ! I've seen god knows how many water birds with fishing gut hanging from their mouths as a result of careless anglers which is not fair.

Passing through the lego city caravan park & into the glen proper & it was a really nice bright cold frosty morning only to hear a lot of shotgun fire up ahead & as I neared the Brunt I thought I'd better get out of Dodge & change direction or risk being shot which I didn't fancy too much.

  So I waded through the burn to head for the steep wooded hill which I could of done without as I wanted to take it as easy on my back & make my way onto the road at the top of the hill.

 And after all that slipping & sliding up the  hill to get to the safety of the road I discovered that when I got to the Brunt that the shooting was taking place higher up the hill so I would of been fine to carry on along the glen, but it wasn't worth the risk.

The track down towards the Black Loch.

 Really still & cold down here as the sun barely makes it over the hill & the long grass was difficult to cycle through, so it was time to bite the bullet & jump the wall into cattle country !

I love this snakey little route along the Brunt glen to the Black Loch which ultimately emerges out at the Halls farm, but it is so hilly with lots of gorse bushes, twists & bends that if there are cattle here (which there normally is) you come face to face with them & have no where to run ! And regular visitors to my blog will probably know of my fear for coo's. But as I cautiously made my way along the cattle trail like a stealthy commando it soon became evident that the cow's had been moved from this field, no fresh cow pats or hoof prints.

The frozen over Black Loch looking very shallow for the time of year it's normally much bigger than this & is often difficult to pass by when there has been a lot of heavy rain, but today the loch is very low & split into three separate parts due to the lack of rain.

 Onwards to the Halls farm where I came across another bath tub but the water was a bit minging in this old tub :-/

 Good observation spot from the top of Pitcox hill & from here the coast was calling so off to John Muir country park I went

Local business Belhaven Smokehouse established in 1975 is one of only a handful of independent fish farm processors in Scotland. Their Dunbar smoked salmon is made by smoking a fillet over oak chips from whisky barrels then preserving it using a traditional rum cure. They smoke many other locally sourced produce as well as supply quality rainbow trout to the local trout fisheries.

 Some sprouts that avoided the Christmas table.

 Some of the few old motors lying around Hedderwick Hill farm, someone seems to like collecting them & I would like to think that some day they will all be restored to their former beauty & road worthy once more.

 Into John Muir park where the air was cold, fresh & many of the grass & sand path ways were frozen solid.

The Biel burn looking very serene as it meanders it's way under the bridge to nowhere & into the sea at Belhaven,

 I went through the Lochend woods in Dunbar as I want to see if I could spy any of the white squirrels that have been spotted, apparently there are a good few of them, they are just grey squirrels but a mutation has made them white, but all I spotted was this normal grey one watching me from the crook  tree.

Homeward bound now & I decided to cycle up part of the pretty much unknown & unused path at Broxburn to Brandsmill, under the railway & A1 bridges to head inland again, the path takes you up to Doon Hill & Spott but I veer off to Little Pinkerton on my way home.  

 Meat, veg & dessert.

 The Bass rock & Dunbar's parish church really stood out in the low afternoon sun as it struggles to shine over the hills.

 Now that's what you call a plate of sprouts !
 There must be some amount of methane produced in that field just now. All the sprouts were loose & not on their stalks so I'm assuming that they didn't make the grade for the Christmas table & are now feed for livestock.

 Back home to Innerwick late afternoon as the temperature drops rapidly & what better way to warm the insides up than with a hot mug of coffee & a couple of Christmas mince pies warmed up in the oven with a dod of brandy butter & a slurp of brandy cream...Ho Ho Ho Merry Christmas all :-)