Almost at my half way mark if I intend to complete this journey in 80 days.
My brother just asked me what the best bit has been and without doubt it has been about the people I have been fortunate to have met.
Sue and her delightful children in Flodden who are raising quail and sent me on a wonderful treasure hunt in the nearby villages. Lorna in Markinch who is so passionate about the refugees penned up in Europe that she is prepared to save for months to go out there to wash bedding and befriend. Helen who felt like a friend I had known forever. Vishnu and Rebecca who have one of the gems of Airbnb and all those rescued dogs. Janet Philip the architect who lives on a farm with her family and should be CEO of B....Homes and creating small but beautiful places for people to live. Rod Philip who cooks a mean venison steak and mows a pathway down by the river so people like me can stroll with pleasure.
And definitely the fishermen of Buckie. I am coming to them
But first Whisky!
Tonight I will be sleeping in a Large Whisky Barrel in the Findhorn Foundation. So I need to investigate a bit.
Whisky spelt without the 'e' is Scottish .
Whiskey with the 'e' is Irish and American (no idea how the Japanese spell it).
I am in serious whisky distillery country now. Not hard to find one round here. They are as common as castles and stone circles. As soon as I come off the single track road from Tillynaught and saw the A98, I was crossing it straight into the Glenglassaugh Whisky Distillery on a mission to buy a fab bottle of single malt for my friend Debs. (I got it Debs!)
I did the tour – just me and a lovely man called Mitchell who was my guide, but I was not allowed to take any photos.
Here is a photo of Debbie’s single malt instead.
It’s a very scientific process now, and this distillery buys in the 60 tons of malted barley every week, ready sprouted and cleaned of nitrates. Mitchell, once of the Scottish Department of Agriculture and Fisheries until he’d paid off his mortgage and could take life a bit easier as a whisky distillery guide, could have had a second career as a per fumier. He talked a lot about ‘nose’ and described images that floated into his head when tasting certain brands. I did a testing for a lovely perfumier in Hastings not long ago and we did the same thing; sniffed and said what images came to mind from the fragrance.
Apparently a bottle of Revival “has a sweet caramel and toffee nose with notes of nutty sherry, milk chocolate and honey, ripe plums, red berries and oranges.”
On the palate “it is sweet, rounded and creamy” with a finish that is “ medium with warming mulled wine spices sherry and caramel.”
He gave me a wee nip. Really? All those flavours? Sorry to report I couldn’t taste any of that but then I am no connoisseur.
I was telling the girl behind the sales counter about my experiences travelling the east coast and about Visit Scotland reps. not being totally thrilled with my views on Fraserburgh and Peterhead and she told me to go to Buckie to talk to the old fishermen who ran the Heritage Centre.
Like these two towns, Buckie was once a major fishing town. For every job at sea there were ten jobs on the shore: sail-makers, electricians, painters, carpenters,net-makers, ship builders and so forth.
Like everywhere else on the East Coast of Scotland it was the herring, the Silver Darlings. The fishermens’ wives could gut 60 herring a minute. It was whole family stuff for generations. From 1950, in Buckie at least, it went from Herring to white fish. The Common market ended all of that. The country was promised a wider trade potential (as both sides are preaching now actually) but no one told the fishermen and boat builders that their lives and livelihood would be destroyed forever. No more small wooden fishing fleets that they traditionally built themselves. Europe now told them how many fish they could catch and what size and what of their catch had to be thrown overboard.
Their boats, only 3 years old in some cases, where replaced by monster trawlers that could catch in one night as much fish as their fleet could catch in a season.
The Fishing and heritage museum is modern and very well set up for school visits.
It can seat 50 children at a time. The item that most fascinates the children is the dog skin that was inflated like a balloon and used as a buoy.
“Och, that’s nothing” confided my guide George, “we may have used dogs but we used to call them down the road Cat town because they used cats!”
The item that most struck me was that so often a fisherman lost at sea becomes unrecognisable after a while in the water. Except by his jersey, knitted with love by wife or mother to a pattern of her own devising. It was that pattern that distinguished one drowned fisherman from another. Sad.
Buckie Fishermans Heritage has a magnificent internet archive of fishing boats and fishing families that are accessed by people from all over the world looking for family connections. It is a labour of love and has taken unbelievable hours to put together. They have over 8,500 photos and provide specific memory boxes to local fisher families in care homes who may have dementia - pictures of their family, their boat etc.
The Training Schooner Captain Scott used to train young people was the last boat made here. It is now in Oman. The centre has memories and a model.
All those skills, all that pride, all that expertise lost to Britain. It is insane. We are an island. We will never be anything else. Our mad excuse for ‘leaders’ have allowed all our manufacturing to die and be replaced with financial services. You can’t eat, or wear, or live in financial services.!!!!
To quote a first nation Canadian:
"When the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught, the last river polluted, only then will we realise that one cannot eat money."
And what well paid staff run this centre of fishing and maritime excellence? None at all. They are all the old skippers and fishermen and lifeboat crew. And when they are gone – knowledge of that way of life is also gone.
I was shown round by George who had to be eighty if he was a day, and then by the secretary of the Buckie Lifeboat. He proudly told me that they had been out just last week to tow in a yacht that had lost power in bad weather.
He asked me to go with him to see the fishermens’ memorial.
It was in a tiny once disused chapel and was now a memorial to all the local fishermen who had died catching fish. There are dozens and dozens of names. Not in wartime – in the everyday business of catching fish. And some were so young and others were all from the same family. In the 1970’s they lost five boats and all crew.
Local crafts people helped make it happen. It is beautiful.
I had intended just to pop in to the Buckie centre and stay for a minute or two and take a couple of pictures and leave, but I was there two hours. Two hours well spent I think.
Now time to find some lunch.
Baxters is synonymous with jams and soup. The Baxter factory at Fochabers has a visitor centre that is charming.
They tell the story of James and Margaret Baxter who started the company and have a mock up of their first grocers shop in Fochaber
The current CEO is Audrey Baxter and she has a signature range of pickles and chutneys and fruit curds. Irresistible once you’ve sampled some even though my car is now resembling a gift shop!
There is a restaurant serving more than just their famous soup, and a whisky shop with hundreds of different local distilleries represented.
I stopped briefly in Elgin, and went on to my new home for one night Findhorn.
I have done workshops there over the years but it has changed and matured. There were some elegant and inspiring eco homes that are privately owned on the Park that put into proactive what this famous foundation believes in, principally sustainability.
My home for the night was in the Barrel Cluster, literally homes made from recycled whisky barrels, made in 1920 and used in a local distillery for 60 years.
I was in the smaller of the twin barrels know of course as the Baby barrel. It was basically a bedroom. Round with a platform bed reached by a ladder. It was gorgeous but I was nervous of falling off the ledge.
Findhorn is a spiritual centre founded by Peter and Eileen Caddy in 1962. It has grown over the years into a community of about 350 people, some living on site and others locally. It has a school based on Rudolf Steiner, a pottery, a community centre, and a shop stocking the new age gizmos books and fortune telling cards I recall so well as well as wonderful organic whole foods. The Universal Hall hosts musical and arts events for the locality as well as renowned workshop presenters.
Richard Rudd of Gene Keys was here last week and my favourite American presenter Caroline Myss is due back again in late Autumn.
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