England and Scotland for fun
Day 8 - Saturday, April 30 -
Scotland
The Highlands, baby!
Saturday, woke up in one seriously dark room --
blinded windows on both sides of a short A-frame ceiling, but the
blinds look thin so I figured it must be early. I carefully slid
open the blind to maybe watch dawn gently break over the highland hills
behind the house, and was instead blasted in the face with full morning
sun (I dove away like a vampire). Once I got my vision back, I
wandered around the house and looked out the windows to scope out the
surrounding scenery in daylight. Thrilled to find across the road
a huge field with ewes and baby sheep ("You mean 'lambs,' Marilyn," Rod
would remind me - but they're too cute to just be called lambs).
I love watching the little ones do their tiny gallops to their mommy
and have their head disappear under her and their little tail wag back
and forth happily, or them walking along and suddenly their knobby
knees gently collapse them into resting on the grass.
Eventually Rod got up (telling me how surprised he
was how late they'd slept in, but I knew they were tired and I had no
idea that my watch was wrong AGAIN and didn't realize how late it was -
although it wasn't that late) and began making porridge for breakfast
-- except he couldn't find the spurtle (a wooden stick for the very
purpose of stirring porridge) and he couldn't be expected to make
porridge without it, except he gave up and got a spoon. Rhona
came down shortly afterward and quickly spied the decidedly NOT stolen
spurtle on the dish draining rack. So we sat down to a nice
breakfast of porridge, toast with bramble preserves, apple juice and
lots of tea. Their friend Caroline (a dancer from Wednesday night
who has a cottage nearby) dropped by, ruddy faced from her bike ride in
the bracing morning air, to invite us over for coffee, which we happily
accepted (although I was full from breakfast). ("An endless train
of tea and coffee!" Rod promised me after Caroline and Rhona stepped
away.) Outside, a raven hopped around a lamb.
Breakfast finished and dishes cleaned, we got in the
car and headed for the Leavers (John and Caroline) for coffee.
(Happily, when Caroline asked Rhona if they were going to drive or
simply walk the three miles over, Rhona said drive.) When we got
to their house (named "Tomnacruan" which means what, I have no idea --
Rod and Rhona hate the name of the cottage they bought, "The Couthie
Wee House" and swear they'll change it soon), John was in the front,
trimming back the grass from a flower bed (with really long handled
clippers that went straight down to blade that pointed to the side and
cut the sod like scissors)(I got out the camera for a picture of
that). John looks like the Scot, with longish hair swept back
from his face and an involved beard and longish mustache, and often
smiling. He laughed and said it was a good thing he didn't call
us at 7:45 this morning like he'd planned.
We went in where Caroline was setting out the cake
(a sort of fruitcake) and coffee, and their Scandinavian friend Jorid
(pronounced Yurid - she also has a cottage nearby) and Caroline's
mother Mary (up from St. Andrew's) were also sitting. Much
talking, and very loud. Poor Mary can barely hear a thing - you have to
almost shout in her ear ("I'm 91 and a half!" she proudly told me), and
when she asked my name, she just couldn't get it no matter how many
times I said it or connected it with Marilyn Monroe as a
reference. Finally the rest of the room shouted what sounded to
me like "Madelyn!" with the Scottish hard "r" and then Mary nodded in
recognition and said she couldn't hear it with my accent. Coffee
was lovely, with John passing around a bowl of Munchmallows (what I'd
call a Scottish version of moonpies, but a little nicer - a small
cookie with a creamy marshmallow topping and coated in chocolate) that
John assured me was Scottish and I'd have to have one, so I did.
After a bit, I moved close to Mary, and she and I
chatted for awhile (me being a bit of a St. Andrew's fan, although I
don't have a lot to go on), and I asked her if she played golf (St.
Andrew's has the oldest golf course in the world, as that's where it
was invented). She said no, but her son used to be a scratch
player (unfortunately he got a job that kept him busy, and now he's a
par 4, which made Rod and John pale). She also told me about
Caroline's oldest son (of two boys) who'd died from a fall while hiking
in the highlands and how sad that was (it also added to Caroline
telling me she was a Monarch of the
Glen fan, a show that some Scots diss as fictional -- the show
revolves around a young man who, because his older brother had died
tragically years earlier, suddenly finds out his family signed over the
estate to him - to spare him from the death taxes - and he's now the
laird and in charge of the entire Glenbogle estate and local town, when
all he wanted to do was be a restaurant owner in London).
A short while later, John took me outside to his bee
hives and showed me how he fed them, lifting the box top and pouring
sugar water into a pan inside, in a sort of exchange for the
honey. I couldn't believe I, who gets really nervous around
flying stingy creatures, was standing over it while he was doing all
this and bees were just flying around. He said he couldn't do the
other box without netting, because the bees for some reason liked going
through the top lid on that one (instead of from the bottom like the
one we were messing with) and that gets them rattled. Caroline
told me and Rhona earlier that they were having some problems with
their honey, as they didn't have quite the flowers in the country they
used to have -- she said in other areas, they burned the heather on the
hillsides, encouraging new growth and flowers (to attract the grouse
for grouse hunting), but not near them. When she mentioned they
had far more flowers in Edinburgh (and I'd believe it, because the
cherry trees were loaded, and everyone's gardens were bursting),
Rhona's wheels began turning in her head about starting a bee colony
(although she admitted the neighbors probably wouldn't care for that).
Too soon it was time to go, and we began toward the
car. Rhona had told me earlier that Caroline was the one to ask
about a type of local wine I'd been looking for ("Cairn o' Mohr" -
which sounds like Care No More when you read it outloud - I saw it in
the Edinburgh Castle giftshop on my last trip with Dad and been
thinking of it since, along with that Drumgray Highland Cream that Dad
admitted later after the tasting that he could go for a bottle of that
as well), and Caroline hadn't heard of it, either (neither had Rod nor
Rhona). She and John did tell Rhona which train station was used
in Monarch of the Glen (Rhona
couldn't figure it out earlier), so we'd be going there tomorrow.
Yea!
Meanwhile, next on our day's adventure was to the
park of Glen Feshie, just a nice nature trails park where we could do
some walking in the beautiful highland scenery. The first part
was flat, with fields of brown heather (it doesn't bloom until late
summer) on both sides of our path (reminded me of American Werewolf in London when
the boys were keeping to the road), and hills beyond that. We
hiked up the woodsy hills (nothing too steep) to a pretty brook
waterfall, and then back down again a different way. Once we got
to the car, Rod and Rhona agreed it was time for lunch, and that Loch
Insh (pronounced "inch") would be a good place.
Loch Insh is a sort of water sports resort, with
sailing on the lake and various other family things to do. We
hurried into the cafe before other people crowded in, and Rod and I got
in the cafeteria line for soup (cream of broccoli for me and Rhona,
tomato for Rod) and bread while Rhona secured a table. The bread
wasn't ready, so we sat down and waited, and it wasn't getting
ready. Rod was getting annoyed and went to complain, but Rhona
jumped up and said SHE'd do it. Rod told me she was afraid he'd
make too much of a fuss, and later she told me she was actually taking
advantage of the situation because she was lining up dinner
arrangements for the surprise birthday party for Rod in two
weeks. She came back with scones - they were just out of bread -
and we ate our meal.
During lunch, I announced that the day before how I
was looking for the Edinburgh Hard Rock Cafe and that I'd "stepped into
Starbuck's for dir -- " and was met with horrified gasps from Rod and
Rhona, upper middleclass educated yuppie-looking hippie-minded people,
who went into the classic anti-Starbuck's rant about low wages for
their coffee growers or something (which I believe they said their
protesters got Starbuck's to improve), and Rhona admitting her first
dislike of them coming from a closer-to-home grudge that they charge
THAT MUCH for coffee and don't offer china to drink out of. "I'm
not paying that and drinking out of paper!" I told her that some
of the ones near my house will give you mugs if you ask and are staying
in, but most people like the freedom to take the rest with them if they
have to leave.
Next stop, cash and groceries for dinner, so we
headed to the nearby small ski (resort shopping on main street) town of
Aviemore (and on the way, driving by Doune House - pronounced Dune
House - which plays as Kilwillie's house in Monarch of the Glen, a gorgeous
mansion/castle house in the distance you can't get near). Rhona
and I roamed Tescoe's grocery store (a chain in the UK), where she got
dinner, some wine, things for tomorrow's sack lunch (I threw in a
3-box-pack of Ribena blackcurrant juice, which I love, and she nodded
that would work). Then we walked across the street to the local
butcher's shop (two guys behind the counter wearing white fedora-style
hats that matched their white aprons - Rhona loves that - Rod says
Rhona loves the butcher who flirts with her), where she got the rest of
dinner and some breakfast for tomorrow, and I saw and purchased a
bottle of "After Burns Hot Chili Sauce" with a picture of Robert Burns
on it ("made in the Highlands").
The wine shop Rhona thought might have the Cairn o'
Mohr (and Drumgray Highland Cream, but I'd seen that in Edinburgh) was
closed, so Rhona suggested we drop by a nice shop in Inverdruie on the
way to our last stop of the day, Loch an Eilen. So we went there,
and it was a nice converted old schoolhouse on the Rothiemurchus Estate
(who had their own "laird"), which included the Doune House.
Happily, they had all sorts of flavors of Cairn o' Mohr (I went with
the elderberry wine), which pleased Rhona to no end -- she thought the
label was as funny as I did, and said it would make a great gift for
some friends for dinners and things. (The saleslady pointed on their
motto "One glass and you care no more!" and Rhona was also pleased to
see that it was bottled near her hometown.) We relaxed and shopped some
more, Rod telling me "why not?" on a highland pottery coffee mug that I
liked (they had a tea plate of the same type and praised its quality
and, of course, Scottishness), so I added it to my basket (along with
an ABBA card for Francesca, to commemorate our Mamma Mia! show - I figured it
would be less likely to find an ABBA card in the States than in the UK).
Then off to the second of our Monarch of the Glen
(coincidentally, because they also just like the park) locations, Loch
an Eilen (pronounced "lock'n eelahn" - meaning lake of the
island). It's a really pretty woodsy park with a lake in the
middle and a castle ruin on a tiny island in the lake (in Monarch,
Archie was going to "borrow" a boat to row him and Katrina to the
castle to cheer her up). We had an ice cream in the shop near the
parking lot, and walked all around the lake, admiring the beautiful old
trees and spring flowers (including Rhona's favorite, the yellow
primroses spotted around). Also saw near the lake a memorial
stone, and Rhona said it was for one of the sons of the laird (an
earlier generation) who'd fallen through the ice and drowned in the
lake, which we noted was yet another fiction-based-on-fact moment with
"that silly fictional" Monarch
(Archie's older brother had drowned in the lake in front of their
castle).
Back to the cottage, very tired but happy (and an
overcast day that never rained, so that was good -- and it was hard to
keep track of time with no sun). Rod opened a bottle of white
burgundy and poured glasses for him and Rhona (I'd wait until dinner),
and set out AMAZING sun-dried-tomato-stuffed olives to snack on while
waiting for dinner, which Rhona was furiously working on in the
kitchen.
It wasn't long before we were sitting down to a fine
Scottish beef steak with mushroom and red wine and cream sauce, and
tatties and broccoli. Afterward we enjoyed some "Scotland's own"
Dunsyre cheese (an upmarket Scottish cheese, a lot like bleu cheese)
and oat cakes (a less sweet, flatter graham cracker-type cracker) with
butter and red grapes. They both told me how amazing that
Scotland was famous for its oat cakes, and, courtesy of big market
chains taking over, how difficult it is for them to find a decent
selection in Edinburgh (Aviemore had more to offer - I told them it was
like me having to go way out of Atlanta to a mom 'n' pop store to find
some groceries that Publix and Kroger don't select from their national
corporate office). They also said they ran into the same problem
with cheese - they'd almost forgotten how good cheddar was supposed to
taste until Alastair brought them some on his last visit from Bath.
Then we retired to the sitting room where the fire
was going really well, and enjoyed some Lady Grey tea with "chocs"
(chocolates), and talked. Rod informed me that the Edinburgh Zoo
doesn't have any elephants, but their penguin colony is doing very well
-- I saw them on my first visit to Scotland. He also recommended
the book Empire by Niall
(pronounced Neil) Ferguson, a fine book that explains, according to its
subtitle (and Rod), The Rise and
Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power.
(Rod's not England's biggest fan, as can be attested by his residence
in Scotland - but he can take a swipe at Scotland, too.)
To bed -- and Rhona said that this evening, I'd have
the warm room, since I sleep above the room we'd been warming with the
fire all evening.
England and
Scotland for fun
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