Another country

Road works on the A1 provided a reason to take the A68 north, riding roller coaster up through Northumberland, between shades of yellow: rape fields in lemony acid full bloom, gorse deep honey golden, verges bristling with cowslips - what's going on? I think of primroses as common, cowslips as rare, yet here they were, and no primroses south of Perthshire.

A late lunch at M&S on the Edinburgh bypass, and by mid-afternoon durham_rambler had to wake me up: "This isn't the time to nod off, we're getting to the pretty bit!" The Highlands were splendid in the sunshine, which picked out the silver birch trunks and the brightest of the spring-green leaves, and the patches of snow on the higher slopes.

We didn't enjoy the scenery as much as we might have, because we'd half-seen warnings of a road closure, signposted far enough ahead to make us fear it was major. There were points where the road being closed would have forced us to detour via Inverness, so we were jumpy until, beyond Dalwhinnie, we turned left and the road to the right was closed: phew!

I don't think it was just relief that made the final stretch, along the valley of the Spean, the loveliest of all: the wooded hillsides came down to a series of lakes, dotted with buildings from the Extremely Silly end of the Scottish Baronial range.

And now we are in the bar of the Glenspean Hotel, and the staff are keen to serve us dinner. I shall allow myself to be persuaded...

A conundrum

If one of you wants the crab cocktail starter, and the venison (with haggis mash) for the main course; and the other chooses the smoked haddock fish cakes and the vegetarian main course, which is a stack of Mediterranean vegetables layered with goat's cheese; what wine will you choose to drink? We cut our losses on the starters - once upon a time we'd have ordered a half bottle of white, but we don't have the stamina these days (even if there'd been anything on the list to tempt us) - and went for the Small Lot Mendocini Zinfandel, which I liked very much: fruity and ot over-tannic, which worked with the tomato sauce on my vegetables, but complex. structured, not over-bright.

"That's not a Durham accent," said the proprirtor, who served us. "Whereabouts in Durham do you come from?" "Durham City." "Ah. I'm from Langley Park."

I wished I'd taken my camera down to dinner. For one thing, the food was elaborately presented. Anything that could be piled up, was: that vegetable stack, obviously, but even the fishcakes were balanced one on top of the other, and as for the chocolate dessert...

For another thing, the dining room has a panorama of mountains. It's perched above the road above the Spean, and looks across to the slopes opposite, and down the valley to more snowy summits. Once upom a time, says durham_rambler, it wasn't the Glenspean Hotel, it was the Nevis View - and yes, that is Ben Nevis just visble beyond smaller but closer peaks.

Tomorrow we will drive down that road and take a closer look.