The Golden Road
May. 19th, 2018 06:54 pmWe have reached Cromarty, and are pausing for breath: we will spend tomorrow here, and set off again in Monday.
We set off very nearly as early as we had planned, which, considering how many things we have done in the last week , I regard as an achievemement.
The rape fields of Northumberland are at a peak; not as many of them as there once were, but in full eye-piercing bloom. The verges are bristling with dandelions, and for one brief glorious stretch their pure gold was separated from the lemon yellow of the rape only by a low stone wall. The gorse was well into bloom (and as you know, when the gorse is in bloom, kissing is in season, but![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
durham_rambler was driving, and declined) and later, on the lower reaches of the Highlands, the bushes were heavy with flowers.
We lunched at the bookshop in St Boswells on bread and soup and coffee and cake: their beetroot and fennel soup is not as good as my beetroot and rhubarb, and nonody's bread is as good as mine (or at least, as much to my taste, which is what counts), but they were still pretty good, and the coffee was excellent. Under the pressure of being surrounded by all those books, I was intimidated, as GirlBear puts it, into buying something (the latest Frances Hardinge and a book of wrapping paper) but I'm not sorry.
We kept turning on the radio for the on-the-hour news bulletin, but there is no news today, just a wedding. To judge from the vox.pops, 80% of the crowd are American. I'd love to think that this reflects the British lack of interest, but I doubt it. Maybe every Briton they asked said "Very nice," but the Americans were prepared to gush, so they got the air-time.
And now we are in Cromarty, and beginning to think about dinner: both the fancy restauant and the hotel are fully booked, and we will have to make do with the pub (oh, noes!). But after spending all day in the car, I'll be happy just to go out and stroll round.
We set off very nearly as early as we had planned, which, considering how many things we have done in the last week , I regard as an achievemement.
The rape fields of Northumberland are at a peak; not as many of them as there once were, but in full eye-piercing bloom. The verges are bristling with dandelions, and for one brief glorious stretch their pure gold was separated from the lemon yellow of the rape only by a low stone wall. The gorse was well into bloom (and as you know, when the gorse is in bloom, kissing is in season, but
durham_rambler was driving, and declined) and later, on the lower reaches of the Highlands, the bushes were heavy with flowers.We lunched at the bookshop in St Boswells on bread and soup and coffee and cake: their beetroot and fennel soup is not as good as my beetroot and rhubarb, and nonody's bread is as good as mine (or at least, as much to my taste, which is what counts), but they were still pretty good, and the coffee was excellent. Under the pressure of being surrounded by all those books, I was intimidated, as GirlBear puts it, into buying something (the latest Frances Hardinge and a book of wrapping paper) but I'm not sorry.
We kept turning on the radio for the on-the-hour news bulletin, but there is no news today, just a wedding. To judge from the vox.pops, 80% of the crowd are American. I'd love to think that this reflects the British lack of interest, but I doubt it. Maybe every Briton they asked said "Very nice," but the Americans were prepared to gush, so they got the air-time.
And now we are in Cromarty, and beginning to think about dinner: both the fancy restauant and the hotel are fully booked, and we will have to make do with the pub (oh, noes!). But after spending all day in the car, I'll be happy just to go out and stroll round.
