Sorry, we're out of Blue Sky
Jun. 26th, 2011 10:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustHome again, and as soon as we left Lindisfarne the weather turned hot and sunny (too hot, today, and turning to thunder, but still, sunshine -). Most of the time we were away, though, the weather was changeable, which gave us some magnificent dramatic skies, but encouraged us to do more indoor tourism and less walking than we might otherwise have done. The forecast for Tuesday, in particular, was for uninterrupted rain, and we made our plans accordingly: we would go to Eyemouth and visit the museum that we never quite got round to, in all the years when Eyemouth was part of our midsummer ritual*.
The sun was silvery through the cloud as we crossed the causeway, and silver on the ripples of water that still lay on the sand, and the hills of the mainland were pearl grey in the mist. The mist was heavier on the A1, and heavier still by the time we reached the border, but it thinned as we turned back toward the coast.
Just before we reached Eyemouth, though, we saw a right turn signposted Burnmouth Harbour, and followed it, plunging down a narrow road, through the pinch point of the the roadworks and steeply down a sharp little valley in a fold of the cliffs, taking a hairpin bend at the kirk and another as the harbour came into sight, parking on the front by the red telephone box, the fishing boat tucked into the hillside with the portaloo at its prow. Opposite, a miniature bronze of grieving women had been set into the jetty, a memorial not to the men lost in the great fishing disaster of 1881, but to the women and children left bereaved. A single row of houses was strung out on each side, closer on the right, further off on our left, and we walked them both. To the right, the Old Lobster House (for sale), the block of holiday homes in a rainbow of pastel shades, the derelict barn in red sandstone and twittering swallows; to the left along the unmade track past the sewage outfall (is this the burn which gives the place its name?) to the more conventionally picturesque cottages, framed with flowers and lobster pots, and the path rising behind the last of them to the road and the bus stop.
So by the time we reached Eyemouth it was lunchtime, and we found ourselves in an Italian bar and bistro just round the corner from the museum, an upstairs room all low tables and black wallpaper, with a bar in padded leather (probably plastic): it felt like 70s retro chic which may not have been intended as retro. But my seafood chowder was excellent, not so much a soup as a heap of fish, prawns and mussels (in their shells - I was glad of the bowl of water supplied for handwashing with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
durham_rambler's mussels, and made more use of it than he did). It was durham_rambler who pointed out that we were upstairs from an ice-cream parlour where we had breakfasted once, long ago**. So we asked about the icecream and instead of the usual recital of the usual flavours, the waitress produced a blackboard, from which I selected rhubarb, blood orange sorbet and toffee fudge cheesecake (only they were out of toffee fudge cheesecake so I had straight toffee instead, which was fine but unexciting. The blood orange sorbet tasted of orange sherbet, which was fun though not quite what I's expected, but the rhubarb was delicious, and tasted of rhubarb). durham_rambler tried to order the Blue Sky, just to find out what it was, but they were out of that too, which was disappointing, and doubly so when we found out that it was bananas and custard (his favourite!).
Back at the museum, the staff and volunteers were all a bit overexcited: they'd had a group of 80 primary schoolchildren throuh that morning, all the part-timers had come in to help out, and now they were all worn out, but pleased with themselves for surviving the ordeal. It's a pleasant little museum, with the usual miscellaneous collection of china, agricultural implements and old photographs, all captioned in terms that suggest that schoolchildren are their primary audience. I liked the list of coopers' tools: the crumb knife, croze, chive and flencher. Also the collection of stencils for marking barrels of herring, and the photos of the herring lassies, who followed the herring (and the work of gutting the herring, in great quantities and at great speed) down the coast, with their Sunday hats in metal hatboxes.
Along the harbour front, where - surely? - the fish used to be landed, there is a maritime museum (with a child-friendly focus on smuggling) but we were museumed out, so we drove home with a detour via St Abb's Head.
*For many years, when we used to drive up to Holy Island on Friday night, arriving at whatever time permitted us to get onto the island for sunrise, we would, once sunrise had been observed and the tide withdrawn, carry on up to Eyemouth for breakfast. There was a café above a grocer's shop, which served a proper Scottish breakfast (like a full English breakfast, but better, with porridge and, if you're very lucky, the option of kippers). Gradually, they reduced what they offered: there was no porridge, and their opening time grew later and later, and the service grew more and more grudging, and finally they closed. It's an Indian restaurant, now.
** There was a phase in this process where some of us adhered to the tradition of going to Eyemouth and breakfasting at the cafe, and others of us - which may just have been me - felt that we not only could, but should, do better. At least once this meant picnicing on yoghourt and buns and a thermos of coffee in the supermarket car park overlooking the beach - and then going off in search of more coffee and, as it turned out, multicoloured icecream.
The sun was silvery through the cloud as we crossed the causeway, and silver on the ripples of water that still lay on the sand, and the hills of the mainland were pearl grey in the mist. The mist was heavier on the A1, and heavier still by the time we reached the border, but it thinned as we turned back toward the coast.
Just before we reached Eyemouth, though, we saw a right turn signposted Burnmouth Harbour, and followed it, plunging down a narrow road, through the pinch point of the the roadworks and steeply down a sharp little valley in a fold of the cliffs, taking a hairpin bend at the kirk and another as the harbour came into sight, parking on the front by the red telephone box, the fishing boat tucked into the hillside with the portaloo at its prow. Opposite, a miniature bronze of grieving women had been set into the jetty, a memorial not to the men lost in the great fishing disaster of 1881, but to the women and children left bereaved. A single row of houses was strung out on each side, closer on the right, further off on our left, and we walked them both. To the right, the Old Lobster House (for sale), the block of holiday homes in a rainbow of pastel shades, the derelict barn in red sandstone and twittering swallows; to the left along the unmade track past the sewage outfall (is this the burn which gives the place its name?) to the more conventionally picturesque cottages, framed with flowers and lobster pots, and the path rising behind the last of them to the road and the bus stop.
So by the time we reached Eyemouth it was lunchtime, and we found ourselves in an Italian bar and bistro just round the corner from the museum, an upstairs room all low tables and black wallpaper, with a bar in padded leather (probably plastic): it felt like 70s retro chic which may not have been intended as retro. But my seafood chowder was excellent, not so much a soup as a heap of fish, prawns and mussels (in their shells - I was glad of the bowl of water supplied for handwashing with
durham_rambler's mussels, and made more use of it than he did). It was durham_rambler who pointed out that we were upstairs from an ice-cream parlour where we had breakfasted once, long ago**. So we asked about the icecream and instead of the usual recital of the usual flavours, the waitress produced a blackboard, from which I selected rhubarb, blood orange sorbet and toffee fudge cheesecake (only they were out of toffee fudge cheesecake so I had straight toffee instead, which was fine but unexciting. The blood orange sorbet tasted of orange sherbet, which was fun though not quite what I's expected, but the rhubarb was delicious, and tasted of rhubarb). durham_rambler tried to order the Blue Sky, just to find out what it was, but they were out of that too, which was disappointing, and doubly so when we found out that it was bananas and custard (his favourite!).Back at the museum, the staff and volunteers were all a bit overexcited: they'd had a group of 80 primary schoolchildren throuh that morning, all the part-timers had come in to help out, and now they were all worn out, but pleased with themselves for surviving the ordeal. It's a pleasant little museum, with the usual miscellaneous collection of china, agricultural implements and old photographs, all captioned in terms that suggest that schoolchildren are their primary audience. I liked the list of coopers' tools: the crumb knife, croze, chive and flencher. Also the collection of stencils for marking barrels of herring, and the photos of the herring lassies, who followed the herring (and the work of gutting the herring, in great quantities and at great speed) down the coast, with their Sunday hats in metal hatboxes.
Along the harbour front, where - surely? - the fish used to be landed, there is a maritime museum (with a child-friendly focus on smuggling) but we were museumed out, so we drove home with a detour via St Abb's Head.
*For many years, when we used to drive up to Holy Island on Friday night, arriving at whatever time permitted us to get onto the island for sunrise, we would, once sunrise had been observed and the tide withdrawn, carry on up to Eyemouth for breakfast. There was a café above a grocer's shop, which served a proper Scottish breakfast (like a full English breakfast, but better, with porridge and, if you're very lucky, the option of kippers). Gradually, they reduced what they offered: there was no porridge, and their opening time grew later and later, and the service grew more and more grudging, and finally they closed. It's an Indian restaurant, now.
** There was a phase in this process where some of us adhered to the tradition of going to Eyemouth and breakfasting at the cafe, and others of us - which may just have been me - felt that we not only could, but should, do better. At least once this meant picnicing on yoghourt and buns and a thermos of coffee in the supermarket car park overlooking the beach - and then going off in search of more coffee and, as it turned out, multicoloured icecream.
