Houton and Midland

Sunday promised to be unremittingly dreich, so a Saturday leg stretch was undertaken in (mostly) drier conditions.

Leaving Houton, the dykes were pinpricked with little bursts of colour as Lesser Celandines lit up the road verges. 

Past Houton Head, the coastline is dotted with the ruins of old military defences.

I wondered whether these rusting steel cables were similarly naval in origin...

But later recourse to an 1882 map suggested that they were connected to the junction of the Land and Submarine Telegraph.

Lunch was taken out of the wind in a ruined building by the shore.

Along Petertown Road, a small wood revealed the catkins of some Alder trees. I think the long thin ones are this year's male catkins, whilst the round brown ones are last year's female catkins.

After an ascent to the trig point on Midland Hill, the downhill route went by the ruined croft of Quarryhouse. Here, my attention was drawn to a shallow pool (which only looked like it was there due to recent rain) and its rather large clump of frogspawn. Debate raged as to whether the pool would dry out before the tadpoles emerged, or if the local Grey Herons would polish the lot off well before that time.

Some ruined crofts just exude a romantic charm which makes even the most hapless DIY-er dream of grand designs. Sadly, the 1882 map of the area did not name this tumbledown cottage, despite the footprint being marked.