This month of May has turned out to be a right mixter-maxter of a month weather- wise. It’s been wet and cold and the garden plants are desperate for heat.
With the relaxation of the visiting rules the Doyenne and I were trysted to take ourselves up to Rosemarkie, on the Black Isle, to see son Robert and daughter-in-law Katie who we hadn’t been able to visit for months.
We hoped the bad weather would blow itself out and looked forward to a weekend of traditional May sunshine.
It was bucketing with rain when the alarm went off and it didn’t stop to draw breath as we packed the car and headed north over Cairn o’ Mount and the Lecht on the road to Grantown-on-Spey.
It’s a favourite journey over high peaks with long views in all directions but we might as well have been driving through Brown Windsor soup for all the view we got.
Wee Corgarff Castle, standing isolated on the windswept lower slopes of the Strathdon hills, could scarcely be seen in the mirk.
It was still coming down in stair rods as we parked at Robert’s front door and the forecast didnae bode well for the weekend.
He and Katie took us off to IV10, a favourite restaurant, for wir tea, where we were introduced to flat iron steaks. They are cut from somewhere off the back of the shoulder and it is a delicious, moist, tender cut of beef.
Grower’s paradise
The Black Isle with its rich fertile land is one of Scotland’s bread baskets. Being that bit north the dawn comes earlier and the evenings stretch out longer than here at home.
It has its own temperate micro-climate and when the rest of Scotland is blanketed with snow the weather sidesteps the Black Isle whose fields are snow free and black, accounting for its name.
At this season of the year the landscape is a chequerboard of green fields of growing wheat and barley, and extravagant splashes of yellow oil seed rape which seems to be maybe 10 days ahead of the crop down here.
Cathedral Antiques in Rosemarkie has been a haunt in the past.
It is a small antique shop with a limited stock but there was no item we couldn’t have brought home and lived with happily.
I bought what was ticketed as an ale glass but I’m using it as a whisky glass. It fits snugly in my hand and I’m thankful to be able to report that the whisky loses none of its efficacy because of the association with ale.
Cheese please
A must for the Doyenne when we’re up there is a visit to the Cheese House in Cromarty.
Run by Jon and his Dutch wife it is an emporium of quality and taste – especially Dutch cheeses, not surprisingly – and we are enjoying the Dutch and Scottish cheeses we brought home.
They live well up there and it’s a great part of the country for some of the best food that Scotland offers.
For supper that evening we polished off 3 kilos of the fattest, juiciest mussels bought from the local French fishmonger.
Exhausted by the previous evening’s feasting we had a lazy start to Sunday morning.
We heard Robert leaving the house to go rowing on the Caledonian Canal with Inverness Rowing Club.
The Doyenne and I met through rowing on the Union Canal when we were at Edinburgh University, so it is a sport close to our hearts.
And now we hear that granddaughter Cecily, who works in London, has joined a rowing club down there as a cox.
The house is a short walk from the sea and Katie and her South African friend Drieka donned wet suits and carried their paddle boards down to the shore for a little light paddle.
It’s not something the Doyenne and I have ever tried and I think it likely that’s how it will stay.
Robert assures us it’s an excellent activity for improving your balance but it’s rather a large outlay for something we can’t work up too much enthusiasm for. So we took ourselves off to Munros Nurseries, near Munlochy, and bought roses and bedding plants.
Melt in the mouth memory
Supper that evening was another Highland special – slow roasted mutton – something you don’t often get nowadays as butchers prefer to sell lamb with its shorter life to slaughter and the plate.
Mutton was a regular Sunday roast when we were youngsters. I fair enjoyed my meal and it’s just a melt-in-the-mouth memory now.
Monday and it was time to pack up and set off home again. It had rained all night and showed no inclination to stop with daylight.
We drove away in the unremitting downpour. It could have been raining cats and dogs, or worse, such as actually happened when herring were reported as raining out of the heavens in Lorne, in Argyll, in 1821.