The Turtle Moves

Autumn walks

Fife is a very beautiful and varied county (or Kingdom, as it likes to remind everyone) all year round, but especially so in Autumn when these golden rolls of hay stretch over the fields and cast wonderful shadows in the late afternoon light. This is a very small hayfield at Falkland, but some of them are spectacularly big, stretching across the lower slopes of the hills.

We have been going out and about on our afternoon walks with Maisie, to take advantage of the autumn sunshine - it won't last long! And I do like to catch the trees as they turn. This field maple on our walk in Falkland today was a good example - half green, half orange.

Soon it will be time to go to Perthshire - a county full of trees - and really experience the colours, man.

The light is fading earlier and earlier in the afternoon, and if we are a wee bit late with our walk, as we were yesterday at Loch Leven, there is always the possibility of dramatic light effects of doom and gloom and dramatic rays of light peeping through clouds.

 

Gothic bathing hut

The weather being lovely and unseasonably warm, we have been taking every opportunity we can to visit our splendid Fife coast before it all gets too cold, windy and raw. So today we pottered over to Elie to make Maisie happy with a rampage amongst the sand and rocks and to allow M'Dear Husband to add to his collection of seaweed. (Every boy needs a hobby, right?)

This is a splendidly dramatic cliff-top folly, no? It's actually 'The Lady's Tower' built in the 1770s for Lady Anstruther who like to bathe (au naturel) in the sea below it. A servant would be stationed in the tower to ring a bell and warn curious yokels to stay away.

How the other half live.

Anyway, this is a splendid bit of coastline and the rocks in this bit of bay are evidence of mighty upheavals - they are volcanic ash. This part of the Fife coast has many splendid examples of volcanic necks, but this particular bay is a great example of the 'lunar landscape' sort of feel you get from great expanses of tuff. (Of course, all you people who have been on exotic holidays have seen much more spectacular things than this, but for something 10 miles from your house I think it qualifies as interesting.)

It's called Ruby Bay, because if you take a handful of the gravelly sand and sift it through your fingers letting the sun shine on it, you will almost inevitably be rewarded with the flash of some tiny red translucent stones - Elie rubies. They are garnets actually, and their presence is also related to the long ago volcanic activity that formed this place.

Lurker in the shrubbery

What is that lurking in the undergrowth? A Berserker!

We decided a mirror would be nice to add a bit of light and interest in the garden, so we got a sheet of mirrored acrylic. M'Dear Husband stuck it to some plywood and made it a frame. Unfortunately, thin acrylic sheet warps very easily, so we decided to set the mirror at an angle so that you didn't walk up to it face on, otherwise it gave a sort of fairground 'hall of mirrors' effect to your appearance. Thus, it reflects bits of the shrubbery when you're on the patio, and bits of the patio when you're down on the path by the shrubbery. I thought it would be good if it also revealed glimpses of something mysterious in the undergrowth, and it just so happened that last week was Perthshire Open Studios - so off we went to see what we could find.

In Blairgowrie, there's a retired dentist who's taken up working with stone. Among the copies of Pictish carving and the sleeping hares there was this wee red sandstone bloke - a berserker (what the Lewis Chessmen have instead of a Rook). He has very ferocious teeth - perhaps his maker was channelling his former employment. You can see him more clearly in this picture of him face on rather than reflected.

We also visited a lovely lady in Alyth, who is possibly the best basket maker and willow weaver in the country.

She's done loads of fabulous decorative hurdles

for various projects around Scotland, and she makes coracles too. I urge you to visit if you're ever up this way.

We bought a 'bothy basket'. The different colours are different varieties of willow and the handle is a piece of hazel branch. It's about 15" tall and I've sat it in the hearth - perhaps it should hold kindling or something.

Maisie's still not sure about our new addition to the garden!

 

Double Coastal Ripple and Burry traditions.

At last! I've finished the double-bed sized blanket that I started back in April. Isn't it impressive? Oh those beautiful seaside colours in the Coast blanket pack of Stylecraft yarn really lift the pale blue spare bedroom and set off the little doll's house beach hut you can see over there in the corner. This blanket may only be acrylic, but it represents about 130 hours of diligent hooky from yours truly - so if I reckon my work is worth £10 an hour, it's quite a pricy object! (This kind of calculation is what you've got to bear in mind when you go to a craft fair or similar and catch yourself thinking that things are expensive. The artisan deserves a living wage, even though they do mostly do stuff because they love it.)

Anyway, I reckoned it was time for a few days off, so I tootled over to Edinburgh to stay with an old friend from university days. We took in a couple of Edinburgh Festival Fringe things and also - the Burry Man!

This wonderful character makes an appearance on the second weekend of August every year to mark the beginning of the Ferry Fair.

He walks round the streets of South Queensferry accompanied by two helpers and preceded by a chap ringing a handbell and shouting ' Hurray, hurray it's the Burry Man's day.' He's covered entirely in burrs - the sticky seed heads of the burdock plant. He has a lion rampant sash and a lovely flowery hat (made for him by his wife). He calls at various houses, where he is given a drink of whiskey. He has to sip this through a straw - it's a precarious process. He is said to bring luck to your house if you give him a drink, and also it's lucky if he lets you take one of the burrs off his costume.

This custom has been going on since at least the 1600s, and probably before that. He's said to ward off evil spirits - he certainly looks scary enough!

The picture below shows him being offered a drink - you can see it's not easy locatiing his mouth to insert the straw.

Family party

This Sunday we had a splendid family get together, with people gathering from far-flung places like Ghana and Cheshire (I know, some of our family are really dare-devil).

It was a great way to christen our new patio, with raucous laughter and a splendid jug or two of Pimm's. This is much the best way to get your 5-a-day, you know. Make a fruit salad, add the odd cucumber slice and then drown in alcohol (the fruit salad, not you). Thank you, best daughter-in-law in the world.

It was absolutely wonderful to have my children and their cousin and all their partners and offspring larking about and making silly jokes and arguing about rock music and eating and drinking and generally being the loud, witty, talented bunch that they are. What a happy old grandmother it made me.

Ooh, Mr Darcy!

This weekend just past we went down to visit Number One Son and family. Cleverly managing to avoid thunderstorms, we had a splendid day out to Lyme Park - the stately home which featured in the television adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Remember Colin Firth emerging from the lake with his shirt all wet and transparent? Apparently so many people do remember that image that they had a giant representation of him doing just that for an anniversary celebration they held here last year.

The house and gardens are lovely, but the best bit was undoubtedly Afternoon Tea in what amounted to our own private little garden as nobody else seemed to be aware of the delights served up here.

It was absolutely scrumptious. Lovely varied sandwiches - with the crusts cut off, of course. Fruit scones with jam and cream. And on the top tier, little traybakes - chocolate brownies, millionaire's shortbread and carrot cake.

Yum, yum, yum.

Wormistoune

While I'm waiting in the queue to book tickets for the Edinburgh Book Festival (number 2247 on the list and counting) I thought I'd tell you about a garden we visited last week.

Wormistoune  House is just north of Crail in the East Neuk of Fife. It's a 17th century Scots tower house and its owners, the McCallums, have spent the last 20 years restoring it and its 1.5 acre walled garden. The picture above is looking across the 'pond' to the stable block with the roof of one of the garden pavilions peeking over it.

They have  excavated the pond (or what most of us would call a lake or lochan) in the woodland area around the house, which has inevitably also created a small hill - McCallum's Mount as the gardener called it. Yes, this is definitely how the other half live - a Head Gardener and two part-time under gardeners, plus the money to restore a 17th century house and doocot and build two ogee roofed pavilions in the corners of the walled garden that have been done so well that they look like they've always been there.

At the entrance to the garden are two big wooden Chinese Lion Dogs.

There are vegetable and flower beds, rock gardens and water gardens, roses and herbs and a formal knot garden all sheltering within these old stone walls.

And in the far corner, hidden in a cool shady woodland area, the best Green Man I've ever seen.

 

These people may have money, but they've also got taste.

Keep a look out for the 'Open Gardens' details next year and come and have a look for yourself.

The tower house is also a barony, so the McCallums can call themselves Baron and Lady Wormiston, and they do. Their one lapse of taste, I think - or am I just being ungracious?

Tiree

The second week we moved to a cottage on Tiree - a very different island from Coll, even though they're just a couple of miles apart. Tiree is very flat and feels almost below sea level. It has miles and miles of white sand beaches all round its coast and is very very windy. There are no rabbits on Tiree, but there are loads of hares - we saw lots. Once again our cottage was close to a beach - this time without even a field to cross - more Maisie heaven.

It was once again a converted but and ben, only instead of putting extensions to front and rear, they had built up the roof into an inverted U shape and fitted two bedrooms up there. Quite a lot of the cottages on Tiree looked like this. You can see how thick the walls are, which made the house very easy to heat with the multi-fuel stove.

We visited a ruined broch on the headland at Vaul (Bhala in gaelic).

 

 

Beautiful blue skies, but boy, was it windy!

This broch, Dun Mor Bhala, is Iron Age.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Further round the coast from the Broch is the Ringing Stone - a huge 'erratic' boulder (a granitic rock dumped by a glacier onto the predominantly gneiss rock of this part of Tiree) which has cup marks pecked out in it, from pre-historic times. If you hit this rock with a pebble, the rock resonates with a distinctly metallic ring.
As I mentioned, Tiree has miles and miles of white sand. This is just a tiny part of Gott Bay. You can probably also see that the sand is blowing - it's still windy!

Some of the cottages have been refurbished and re-thatched - very pretty.

We liked Tiree, but preferred Coll - there was more variety in the scenery there. Maisie, however was ecstatic wherever we were - she was out and about with both members of her pack - what more could a dog want.

She had sand to bury her ball in.

 

 

 

 

 

And sea to wash it in. She was a very salty little girl when we got home.

Coll

Just over the road and through a field from our cottage was this glorious beach. Maisie was in seventh heaven, and we were pretty happy as well. The islands you can see in the distance are Rhum Eigg and Canna, with the Cuillins of Skye beyond.

The cottage had obviously been a well-loved home, and the garden was full of quirky objects and whatever plants are tough enough to withstand salty winds and cold winters.

We walked loads and saw lots of birds that I've never seen before, like Twite, Great Northern Diver and Golden Eagles. Plus of course lots of terns, gulls of many different kinds, ravens, hooded crows, a cuckoo, swallows, a whitethroat (melodiously resident in the garden) and rock doves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The weather was mixed, but even when it was wet it didn't stay that way for long.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We had a great storm one day, and the next time we went across to our beach it was covered with washed-up seaweed. We had brought a book on seaweed, and thought we ought to get better at identifying the different species,  so here were plenty of specimens laid out for us to practise on!

On one of our walks we came across another lovely bay with three or four seals bobbing about near the shore. They were very curious about us and kept swimming in for a closer look. They didn't even mind Maisie being equally curious about them.

First day of the holiday.

Our little cottage on Coll was a traditional two roomed - originally thatched - cottage. It has had a small extension added onto the front to house a bathroom and another small one to the back for a second bedroom. The main body of the house is as it always was - a but and ben. Living room with multifuel stove (that's probably the but where the cows were) and a kitchen with multifuel stove with the box bedroom in between the two so you get the warmth from everything. Having travelled with the daft dog on a ferry full of strange sounds, sights, other dogs and general worrisomeness, we were very glad to alight in this little haven at Tigh an Lochan and be met with a little decanter of sherry and the message that Fiona and Angus welcomed us to their home and urged us to relax. The evening view from the cottage over the sea to Rhum helped in the general unwinding.

It's late now and there are things to do, so I will leave you with this and promise to give you more island pictures tomorrow.