Robert Burns Cottage Garden, Alloway, Ayrshire

Posted on 17 August 2023 by Katrina

It ‘s quite a while now since we visited Robert Burns’s birthplace and I meant to blog about the garden soon after blogging about the cottage here, but I’m just getting around to it now.

Burns’ father planned to have a smallholding and market garden here but the plan didn’t quite come to fruition. You can walk around the area now and admire the wicker structures.

Below is a different type of ‘wicker man’.

Below is a wicker Tam O’Shanter on his horse Meg. Really well done I think.

And there’s a more formal topiary garden that you can walk around too.

It doesn’t take long to go around the cottage and gardens but the entrance price also includes entry into a very modern Robert Burns Museum and Centre not far away, and that is very interesting, and has a good cafe!

https://flic.kr/p/2oWbBUf

Haddington, East Lothian, Scotland

Posted on 13 May 2023 by Katrina

A couple of weeks ago we stopped off in Haddington in passing. A friend had told us that St Mary’s Church there was worth seeing. Unfortunately it wasn’t open that day, but it was still worth a visit.

The photo doesn’t give the idea of how large it is. The church was founded in the 1380s but was more or less a ruin by 1548, a victim to the ‘Rough Wooing’ by King Henry VIII, his attempt to persuade the guardians of the infant Mary, Queen of Scots to allow him to marry his son Prince Edward to Mary, thus securing Scotland for himself and England.

The setting is lovely with the River Tyne running right past the church grounds.

I know that people love to have a river view from their homes but I always wonder how often the river pays you a visit!

I love old stone bridges too, so it might be worth being flooded out every now and again for this view – or maybe not! There’s a swan just in view if you look closely. If you’re in the area Haddington is well worth a visit, it’s really historic and has some eclectic shops. We had a lovely lunch there.

https://flic.kr/p/2ozZ2tZ

St Andrews, Fife, Fitzroy Barometer

Posted on 3 May 2023 by Katrina

A couple of weeks ago we visited St Andrews. Our favourite lunchtime cafe was full up, well we were offered the tent in the back garden but as it was almost blowing a gale and cold we decided against that. So we ended up in the cafe where Catherine met Prince William (for coffee) when they were students there. We had never been in it before, it’s definitely a studenty place. Jack ordered a toasted cheese bagel with beans, and he was astonished to see when it arrived that it was baked beans. I think he imagined something a bit more exotic, I think he enjoyed it anyway – it was different.

When we left the cafe I noticed that there was something interesting in the wall across the road, on closer inspection it turned out to be a Fitzroy Barometer.

You can read about it here.

It seems that they had one of these instruments on HMS Beagle to help them predict the weather but apparently they now know that the crystals inside the glass form different patterns when the temperature changes. We have a smaller much less fancy version of one which was given to us as a weather predictor, but it’s interesting to watch the crystals change anyway.

Firth of Forth, Bridges and South Queensferry

Posted on 19 April 2023 by Katrina

A few weeks ago we drove to South Queensferry on our way home from – I can’t remember where! I thought you might like to see some of the photos I took.

The photo below is of the Forth Road Bridge which dates from the 1960s and if you look carefully you can just see the white struts of the new Queensferry Crossing behind it.

These photos were all taken from almost exactly the same spot, it’s not often we walk out to the edge of the river, so I don’t think I’ve taken any photos of South Queensferry from this angle.

The houses aren’t quite so quaint looking from the back as you can see, but the Jubilee Clock stands out well. It was built to commemorate one of Queen Victoria’s jubilees of course.

The tide was out on the Firth of Forth, that always makes things look a bit messy. South Queensferry is where the better off people of Edinburgh used to go for the weekend to escape the smells and muck of Auld Reekie, now it’s just an afternoon jaunt for people.

If you click on the photo below to see it enlarged you will be able to see through the bridge arch an island although it might not look like one to you. The island is warship shaped and I believe that during WW2 they built structures on it which made it look even more like a warship – in fact the Nazis claimed to have sunk this ‘warship’ several times. It was used defensively with men stationed on it as there was a lot going on in this area during the war as the Victorian Forth Bridge which was the only one there at the time was a major target for the Nazis and they had their submarines skulking around too.

If you’re interested you can read a bit about South Queensferry here.

Wolsingham and Stanhope, Weardale, County Durham, England

Posted on 15 September 2021 by Katrina

We’ve done hardly any travelling around since Covid so I haven’t been doing much blogging about what I regard anyway as interesting places, and even when we did travel in May – to the County Durham area – I only blogged about one place. So here are a few photos of Wolsingham.

These north of England villages are just as scenic as the Cotswold villages, but I suppose their location counts against them as it’s not a handy journey from London and the south – as the Cotswolds area is. I can’t resist an old church though despite not being at all religious. Below is St Mary’s and St Stephen’s Church.

I think it’s the burial grounds around old churches that I’m really attracted by, strange I know. But some of the gravestones can be fascinating.

The church dates back to the 12th century but like so many it was rebuilt in Victorian times, the 1840s for this one. It still looks quite ancient to me though.

There’s a war memorial of course – there always is, sometimes they’re in the middle of nowhere, or so it seems.

You can read about the pretty wee town of Wolsingham here if you’re interested.

The next town along, Stanhope, has a similar church also with an interesting graveyard. This is St Thomas’s.

As you can see there was a lovely cherry tree blooming nearby.

You can read about Stanhope here.

Firth of Forth at Aberdour, Fife

Posted on 26 June 2021 by Katrina

Earlier in the week we drove to the very historic wee coastal village of Aberdour, just for a change of scenery. If you look carefully at the photo below you’ll see there are stone steps which have been cut into the rock years ago, but they have almost been worn away by the daily batterings from the Firth of Forth on its way to the North Sea.

I was standing on the beach at Aberdour when I took these photos and if you click to enlarge you will be able to see Arthur’s Seat, the Salisbury Crags and the smaller lump of rock to the right is Edinburgh Castle. In reality you can see it fairly clearly from the Fife side of the Forth.

The large building at the far end of the photo below is a hotel, well it used to be but it may not be now. There were actually a couple of women swimming in the sea, I think they must have had wet suits on though as it’s absolutely freezing and it wouldn’t take long for hypothermia to set in. There weren’t many people around though so it all felt very safe.

I should have taken a photo of the houses at the edge of the beach but I didn’t, however you can see them in the background of the photo below of Jack and our friend who had never been to Aberdour before. There are some lovely houses there but they would be very expensive as Aberdour is an easy train journey from Edinburgh.

But Maureen thought that this quaint wee house below on the town’s High Street would just do her fine! Do you ever pick out a favourite house when you visit a new place?

There are lots of images of Aberdour here.

My Garden and St Andrews, Fife

Posted on 23 March 2021 by Katrina

Spring has definitely sprung in Fife, not that you would kow it from this photo, I think a new camera is required, or maybe it would be better if I used my phone. Anyway there are various primulas, snowdrops, heathers in flower, but they look very ‘peely wally’ in the photo, that’s a Scottish phrase meaning pale.

Since these photos were taken the garden has had a good ‘redd up’ that’s another Scottish phrase meaning tidied up. There was a whole winter’s worth of dead leaves and broken branches.

There are a lot of primroses around, I think I only had one plant to begin with, they’re great at self-seeding in this garden.

The one thing that does really well in my garden is moss, it grows abundantly on the soil and the grass. Looking on the bright side – I won’t have to buy any sphagnum moss to line hanging baskets!

The Belfast/butler’s sink in the background is a fairly new acquisition which is needing work done on its surroundings. I plan to entice birds into it, it should make a good big bird bath. In my previous garden I had a bigger one and I put some water plants in it, it was very popular with the blackbirds but I’ve only seen a couple of magpies in this one so far. Luckily they were together so it was two for joy!

I’ve been hard at work in the garden digging up more turf and I’m waiting for a delivery of gravel to arrive. Jack is very happy to have less grass to cut.

What else have I been doing apart from gardening and reading a lot? Well, last Friday we drove to St Andrews, it was really quite exciting to travel more than five miles, just lovely to see some different scenery for a change. It started out so bright but it got duller as we reached the coast. Below is a photo I took of one of the beaches in St Andrews. It was very quiet by the time we walked back towards the town. The wee cottage on the left hand side of the photo is the lifeguard centre and the ruins of the cathedral are almost in the centre in the distance.

The town itself was very quiet too, the only shops open in Scotland are shops selling food so it was only the ice cream shops and a posh whisky shop which were open. I’m presuming that as the whisky shop also sells shortbread that was the reason it was allowed to open!

I could only stand and gaze at the secondhand bookshop, my nose wasn’t quite pressed against the window, but it wasn’t far off. I think it might be open again in about five weeks from now – one person in at a time – or two from the one household no doubt.

Inverkeithing, Fife

Posted on 8 March 2021 by Katrina

Way back in February 2020 when there was talk on the news of an imminent lockdown we drove to Inverkeithing for a bit of a rake around at an antiques/secondhand shop which is housed in an old cinema.

After that we decided to have a bit of a walk around the historic parts of the town, knowing that it would be quite some time before we were able to stray from home again, mind you I never thought it would be more than a year! You can read about the history of the town here.

The two photos below are of Fordell’s Lodging.

It’s thought that the town dates from as far back as Roman times in AD 83, but the first church was built around AD 400. There was a Franciscan friary which would have been used as an overnight stopping off place for pilgrims on their way to St Andrews. There are quite a lot of ancient buildings still standing in the town. Sadly one very interesting looking building is standing empty and unused, but another one has been converted into flats which should stop it from deteriorating.

The photo below is of St Peter’s Kirk.

Marriage lintels are a tradition in Scotland, especially in the east, with the initials of the bride and groom being carved into the lintel with the date of the wedding in the middle. This one is on Thomsoun’s House, 1617, it’s a bit fancier than most of them.

Lamb House, Rye, East Sussex

Posted on 28 November 2020 by Katrina

I was about to start doing my ironing the other day so I had to decide which DVD to watch whilst doing it as I absolutely must have something to distract me from the task, yes the ironing does suffer and I often end up ironing in even more creases but it keeps me semi-sane! Anyway, I plumped for the Mapp and Lucia series by E.F. Benson which I’ve watched several times before but more than anything I just wanted to re-visit the lovely wee town of Rye in the only way that I can at the moment. Lots of Rye locations were used in the filming of the series and they’re all very recognisable. It occurred to me that I had never shown any of the photos of the garden before, not that they’re all that exciting, I hope it was better when the house was owned by E.F. Benson and before him by the American author Henry James, or the several other authors who seem to have lived there in the past. I can see why people love the place despite it being a bit of a tourist Mecca, it was a well known haunt of smugglers in the past, as well as French invaders and the whole place is very atmospheric – and it has a secondhand bookshop!

Jack’s posts about Lamb House and Rye are here. You can read more about Rye here.

River Tay, Perth, Scotland

Posted on 10 November 2020 by Katrina

For obvious reasons our travelling this year has been very much curtailed, but I’ve been coping well with having to keep within the guidelines for travelling around, even when we were only allowed out for an hour a day for exercise, and to go to the supermarket. But it looks like we in Fife will have to stick to our own county again soon as Covid stats rise again. So last Thursday we drove to Perth in the neighbouring county, just for a change – and while we could. I wasn’t interested in the shops – well – apart from the Oxfam bookshop, but the River Tay is right at the top of the High Street so we went to have a look at it. Unfortunately as you can see from the photos below we were a week or two too late for the best of the autumn colour.

There’s a nice old bridge over the river.

And a not quite so nice more modern bridge.

With my back to the river I took a few steps forward to take the photo below. The river is perilously close to the shops and the town has flooded in the past but I think they’ve solved that problem, for now anyway. I love towns with a river running through them, as all the old places do. The building on the left below with all the flags hanging from it is now the Perth County Council Headquarters. I really like that they are inclusive and happily fly the flags of so many other countries instead of just a Union Jack/flag or Saltire/St Andrews flag.

You can see some great images of Perth here.

Yes I DID buy a couple of books in the Oxfam bookshop, but I’ll keep those for another time.

Pining for the West

Meanderings about recipes, books, craft and more

Category Archives: Towns