Day 48: Meet-ups and Makers

Good things discussed at breakfast this morning with Paul, our host, and the Swiss couple also staying in his lovely bright, light filled home overlooking Loch Broom.

One subject was about Lochs. The three tourists amongst us all thought that a Loch was a Lake. So how can Loch Broom have ferries that go across the sea to the Hebrides? Paul, a coastal rower, explained that a Loch can be any body of water. Loch Broom is fresh water. But salt water from The Minch - the bit of sea separating the mainland from the islands - floats on top of the fresh because the salt makes it more buoyant. When he is rowing after lots of rainfall and all the streams are emptying themselves into the Loch, it is harder to row as the salt is more dilute. So now we know.

To more urgent matters. Find Tesco in Ullapool and buy some Smidge.

Result.

I have only been here a few hours but an artist couple have already been mentioned to me several times by different people, out of nowhere. Colin White and his wife run Bridge House Arts – which appears to be an art school. 

They run day courses, weekend and week long courses and only this morning Paul showed me on his computer that they have just one place left on two separate weeks in July. I will be in Cornwall or even Hampshire by then but it has piqued my interest. 

While in Drumbeg Stores, I mentioned to the artist owner, that my fingers were itching for paint, pastels and boards, and he said “If you love colour you need to be here in the Autumn”. The idea of coming back to paint has been planted.  I know there is no such thing as a coincidence so I looked them up on the internet and what really does interest me is that they do a Portfolio Intensive each year – from October to March. It’s for students who need a portfolio to get into Edinburgh art school but they also take adults on a sabbatical. That sounds like it could be me.
 Next year I might just come back here and have the art school experience I never got to have.

Across the road from them is Highland Stoneware, a company that make and hand-paint all their own pottery.

My friend Laurie repairs pottery and porcelain and I paint them for him before his wife Debs sells them. So I was interested in seeing what ‘real commercial’ hand painting looks like.

I watched two of the painters. One had worked in the company for three years...

and one for fifteen...

I couldn’t say anything to them but I was surprised at the standard of the workmanship – not in the most positive way actually. And it was very expensive and commercial rather than handcrafted. Maybe all the punters want to know is that  something has been hand painted rather than covered with transfers and they are satisfied. I saw much better quality hand painted china in the Ceard gallery (www.ceard.co.uk) and later in a gallery in Lael.

As I was about to leave I spotted a large ceramic ‘pebble’ and had it been for sale I would have bought it. It was the best thing in the whole place and not for sale. 

Paul their potter has worked for Highland Stoneware for over thirty years. He very rarely keeps any of his own work. But he’s keeping this piece. I don't blame him.

Feeling peckish I successfully located the Seafood Shack that I had been told about, run by two young wives of local fishermen.

It was by luck rather than by judgement as it was hidden away in a yard off a small street, but the haddock wrap was delicious and I had scoffed it down before it occurred to me to photograph it!  

Why would anyone need to photograph food anyway unless it was for a cookery book.

And missing my vocation as a TV anchorman - that takes me neatly into a link about cookery books.

I briefly mentioned for Outlander fans that there is now an Outlander Cookery book called Outlander Kitchen. The local bookshop here has it as does Amazon.

It is full of remarkably posh recipes that the writer chef claims have come from the words and foods mentioned in the books. Mmmm...I have read a few of the books and I don’t recall any kind of sixteenth century pissaladiere.

And there’s more...an Outlander Knitting book no less

Somewhere publishers are doubtless devising a “Knit your Own Outlander Cast” book as we speak.

Ullapool is full of arts and crafts, and yet I found a flyer in the town for another ten miles outside by a Gorge I had planned to visit. Nothing in Scotland is close by. I had forgotten just how travelling from a to b in the highlands could take up to three hours and most of a tank of petrol. Since this was turning out to be a bit of an arty farty crafty sort of day I set off regardless.

There is something wrong with Gloria. I am accelerating and she isn’t but just maybe it is my imagination and she is just fed up with all these mountain roads and all the emergency stops and reversing required on single track roads.

Guy and Zoe Kerry run Lael Gallery (FB: Laelcraftgallery)

Good job I had a flyer or I would have gone straight past because you cannot see them from the road, and that would have been a pity. Guy does put direction boards up on the main roads but they frequently disappear. Not swiped by competitors either, removed by road maintenance crews of some kind. Like the Ceard Gallery in Ullapool 95% of their stock is local and Scottish. But it is not a clone of the Ceard. Guy and Zoe go out of their way to have different products to everywhere else. What they have is as beautiful but not the same.

Guy is a wood turner and makes beautiful bowls.

His claim to fame is that Nigel Slater bought some of his sycamore porridge bowls and featured them on his TV programme. Sycamore can be wetted and dried over and over without spoiling and it has no taste – ideal for porridge bowls or soup or any other warm wet food. Maybe Guy should get in touch with the publishers of the Outlander Kitchen Cookbook and do a deal.

The Lael Gallery is only in its second season and has still got its collective fingers crossed that they will be able to make a success of it. Being small and not in a town, they are ignored by coach parties and not as many tourists as they would like stop to visit. Their little gallery is out of the way, way out here because they could not afford shop premises in Ullapool which are actually higher than my mate Jacky was having to fork out in Eastbourne. Seems mad to me since lots of shops in Ullapool are standing empty and some have been empty a while. Are landlords so greedy that they would rather hold out for some future tenant than have a good local one now? Seems so.  

My last port of call today is something also handcrafted, but this time by nature.

The Corrieshalloch Gorge is a tremendously deep cleft in the rocks. In Scottish  it means Ugly Hollow but I followed the winding pathway through the foliage to the suspension bridge from which you get the best views and I thought it was beautiful.

Like lots of other beautiful places here it is well managed by National Trust Scotland.

Took some photos of Ullapool on my way back to Paul’s house as the sun is shining and the weather is still wonderful and warm.

Perhaps I can ask him to take a look at Gloria and tell me what he thinks.