Bartimaeus

On the way back from choir I was very surprised to see a glistening green frog right in the middle of the road. I decided to hover near it, not just to try a closer picture but also to try to encourage it to hop to the safety of the side. It was a quiet street but it looked very exposed there. 

It sloped off. I am not entirely sure it was any safer at the edge where cars are parked, but I hoped it would head towards the leafy gardens. The next day I saw another small bright creature in an unexpected place. I reckoned it was safer though. Some smaller things might now be vulnerable prey.

A couple of days later Shane had suggested a bike ride and we set off by train to Longniddry station. We were on a lovely little bike or foot path. I saw a frog sign and thought, with my city frog in mind, that they might be providing a safe crossing for frogs there.  

We stopped to look. In fact the frog at the top was alerting passers-by to some nature information, which was hidden in the post. 

This one was all about pond life but wasn't all about frogs. In fact these might eat frog babies. I once collected tadpoles and a water beetle was in with them. Soon I had no tadpoles and one fat beetle in my container.

With a nod to the history of the path as a former railway line, the notices resembled old signals. As we went along we saw there were several other ones with different animals signs at the top e.g. a bird or a butterfly, to signal this was another nature information point.

We reached a point where Shane thought we might stop for a coffee but in stead I went into an art exhibition. It was very varied and many arts and crafts were represented. Paintings and photography were around the walls but there was also quite a lot of ceramics and fused glass around the middle. None were in cases so you had to be quite careful as you weaved around visitors and exhibits.

 The chairs looked inviting but were not for sitting on. A rather angry looking herring gull sculpture looked ready to scare us off.

There were even some garments among the sculptures, glass, willow baskets and fused glass.

Shane had enjoyed a spell in the sun while I perused the paintings and crafts. It wasn't far to East Linton where we stopped for lunch. Shane parked the tandem while I looked in a cafe to see if there were empty tables A man at a table caught my eye and looked to invite me to come in further. I said hello. I went out to tell Shane it was good to go and they had free tables. When I went in again the man was looking over and keen to get my attention. He had had a tandem in his youth (he was now in his eighties) and was admiring ours. His stoker, Margaret, was at the table too and she agreed that passers by used to accuse her of "not pedalling on the back" as they do to me sometimes. But not today, in fact as we flew past some other cyclists on the way there, it didn't look like we lacked power at all. Folk usually say it on a steep or long inclines where we are toiling slowly and leave us open to such cries. The same chap had another chinwag with us after lunch. The tandem does draw attention.

Back on the road we came across an interesting structure in a field. It was a doocot in good repair, cared for by the National Trust for Scotland.

I was amazed it was as old as sixteenth century. I peered in the door and saw plenty droppings so it might still be used. The owners liked to eat the pigeons and not only attracted them but kept them safe by adding defences to keep rats away. Local farmers were less happy as the pigeons ate their grain.

Not far away Shane was pleased to see the water wheel of the mill in action.  From the footbridge, we admired the gate that diverts the water, so controlling the flow.

We were lucky enough to catch the start of an informative tour that explained about the hardness of the different woods and stones used; the intricate workings and processes in the mill, including removing poisonous seeds of a wild flower from the grain, the use of ceramic tiles on the floor of the grain drying kiln; the running repairs carried out by millers as cog teeth broke and the river floods, some of which had flooded the upper floors of Preston Mill.

While we have visited a few windmills, we haven't had a tour of a water mill before and don't recall ever getting details of the grain drying process, just the grinding and grading of grain into flours. It was an even more welcome break than expected, especially as it provided me with a bottle of lemonade and made use of their toilets.

We whizzed back over undulating hills to North Berwick where we got in with minutes to spare to a volunteer run cafe that we had enjoyed before. They were doing carry outs only by then. I carried my drink but Shane had the tandem to deal with and to my surprise he had a spot for the paper cup. The brackets are usually for sealed plastic or metal bottles but one bottle cage was in a position that allowed a more fragile cup to be safely carried but I have never seen him do this before. 

We sat on a bench and had our drinks as we waited for the train. Just before it arrived I felt something hit my shoulder. I looked and saw a bird dropping on my jumper. It was solid enough to shake off most of it on to the ground and hadn't hit my hair as it was tied back. I didn't see the guilty party. It was an amusing topic of conversation with the others on the bench as the train rolled in.

That evening we watched a programme called The Birds - it wasn't the Hitchcock horror, but about filming murmurations and trying to understand them. I have seen starlings but these were coastal birds called knots. The wildlife photographer has found the murmurations seem to be a way of avoiding a peregrine falcon in their midst and eventually the most exhausted knot that cannot maintain its place in the complex pattern, drops out and becomes vulnerable to attack. While one felt sorry for the knot, the falcon also has babies to feed and nature is a fragile balancing act.