Hi Katrina
I landed on this blog after googling Symingtons table creams. I am 63 years old next month and lost my parents in 2005 and 2018, but was brought up on table creams as a kid. Coffee and Maple & Walnut flavours were my favourites, and I am definitely going to give your recipe a try.

As for the west coast of Scotland, what can I say !! My parents had a friend from Ottery St Mary in Devon who I believe may have done some work for David MacBrayne ferries back in the late 1950s or very early 1960s, and I heard some of the conversations about those wonderful sounding places in Scotland. I left school in 1978 and joined British Rail as a booking clerk. After 12 months service our grade was entitled to free travel so I just had to visit Skye !!!

The first trip was from Wales via Crewe to Glasgow to catch the 1638 to Mallaig. I slept overnight in a coach in the siding there then caught the ferry over to Armadale the next morning then thumbed a lift with a nurse returning home from Glasgow. She dropped me at Broadford crossroads, where i caught a bus to Kyleakin, then ferry over to Kyle etc.

My second trip was to do the journey in the opposite direction. So Wales-Crewe-Glasgow-Inverness to catch the last train down to Kyle of Lochalsh. Now I knew that a ferry was timetabled to.sail south from Kyle to Mallaig on Monday Wednesday and Friday, so I was anticipating to find somewhere to sleep on that Thursday night. Arriving Kyle and disembarking the train I noticed a fisherman on the platform.

No idea what possessed me but I walked up to the chap in oilskins and asked what time the next ferry would be to Mallaig. He said that his boat would be leaving in a while and I could travel with them, so we walked down to the end of the platform, to the quay, then climbed aboard the fishing boat. I was led up to the wheelhouse and was mesmerised by the dark interior but with the controls lit by subdued lighting and with green glows from the radios radar etc. I suppose it was the Gaelic language talking on the radio which was the most gripping for me – didn’t understand a word !!!

We entirely slipped moorings and headed away from the quay into the sea between the mainland and Skye then all of a sudden there was a huge metal grating sound and the bows of the fishing boat rose up. We had run aground on some rocks !!!! When I realised what had happened I must have had a real worried look on my face because the skipper laughed at me and told me not to worry. As a 17 year old from rural Wales I was thinking that I would be eaten by sharks but my mother wouldn’t know until I didnt return home the middle of the following week !!

Another fishing boat arrived on the scene and one of our crew shot a line over to it to which they then hauled back a much thicker line to our boat. Once in position, and with their boat tugging, and full astern from our engines we slipped free of the rocks. he rest of the journey was uneventful, we sailed more or less East, then turned south into the Sound of Sleat. I went down into the mesroom and tried to sleep but I kept watching a towel hanging from a ceiling hook swing back and fore at quite an arc. Translating this into reality up on deck I realised we must have been bobbing around in what I believe was a storm 6 or 7.

We eventually arrived in Mallaig harbour and I remember having to scramble across six other vessels to get to dry land. I walked over the station, expecting the coaches to be in the platform from the previous nights arrival from Glasgow Queen St, so walked up to the train and tried a door, found it unlocked so climbed in and sat down at probably about five AM. The train was less cold than being outside but was still cold, so I walked up to the locomotive and climbed in the cab which still had a bare amount of warmth, but ended up sitting inside the engine room, against the power unit for a little more warmth.

I expected the traincrew to turn up around 5.30 AM so went back into the coaching stock, then sure enough the crew started up the diesel engine and fired up the steam boiler, and that lovely steam heating start passing through the train. I admit that after the sea journey from Kyle to Mallaig I was a little tired and catnapped off and on for the journey back to Glasgow, although I was awake for the passage through snow covered Monessie gorge – still one of my most favourite railway locations anywhere.

At 17 years old I obviously had little fear back then Katrina !!! .
Thanks again

Phil Bartlett
Great Wyrley
South Staffs