More landscape pictures

How come that when you're already in a rush and trying to make your way along the Edinburgh City Bypass, the traffic seems to come to a standstill and it takes hours to get from side of town to the other, when on days when you have plenty of time and don't have to be somewhere precisely on time there are hardly any cars and you arrive at your destination at an ungodly early moment? Is this some perverse rule of nature?

Whatever it is it happened to me this morning but fortunately the Grosvenor Show people who were expecting me at 9 am didn't mind me giving them a quilt at 8.30 am instead. So I could  make my leisurely way back home again, taking my time and I decided to concentrate on landscape as this will remain the theme of the Calumet Group on Blipfoto for the rest of this week. So driving down the A702 along the Pentland Hills I was scouting out opportunities for pictures that combined with a place to park. The lay-bys on this road down into the Borders and beyond are usually full of hikers making their way up the sides of the slopes and on such a splendid sunny day there were a lot of them. But I grabbed every available free spot and these pictures are the result. Above the Pentlands,

and here you can see that the view looking towards the other side of the road is pretty spectacular too. Loved those low hanging clouds above the landscape.

But for today's blip I could not resist this photograph of the hills in all their beautiful bareness even though

I was very tempted by this view of West Linton, taken from our own little lane, looking down. So typical Borders with the sheep peacefully grazing on the slopes, with in the background the Mendick Hill. It remained beautiful all day although we did have the first ground frost first thing this morning and the overall feeling is autumnal.