Impressions

This past week my wife was on holiday and we enjoyed some nice day trips.

On Wednesday we went to see the art exhibition Impressionism & Scotland at the Royal Scottish Academy Building at the foot of the Mound in Edinburgh. We saw paintings by Van Gogh, Renoir, Monet, Whistler, Guthrie, and many others.

One in particular caught our attention. The foreground of the scene was captured with great clarity and detail, but the middle-ground and distance were painted in the Impressionist style, quickly and sketchily. The painting is called Under the Cherry Tree, painted by Sir John Lavery in 1884. You can see it here on the Ulster Museum site.

We thought that this was similar to the way in which we see the future path approaching. The upcoming days and weeks can be anticipated with a fair amount of detail, but as the future time goes into the distance the amount of detail that we can see becomes less and less.

The exhibition is on until October 12th and you can read more about it here.

We visited some more cycle trails in the Border forests on Thursday. This time we ventured to tackle some red trails, partly because there was no easier blue trails going in the right direction. Liz managed to negotiate both of the red trails without falling off, due to her wise and sensible approach of stopping for a look before tackling the difficult bits. As for me, I rolled my bike when I didn't quite maintain my balance after going over a step drop. I made quite an impression on the undergrowth down the hillside, but fortunately there were no nasty nettles or jaggy bushes, and no tree stumps or rocks. So although I made an impression, nothing made its impression on me and my bike and I survived our roll intact!

We enjoyed our adventure on the bikes and hope to ride some of the trails again sometime, but perhaps with more suitable bikes the next time!