A Taste of Real Winter

View from my rear window, looking north to Newcastle.

It seems almost incredible that in the last couple of days there were children in this country finding out what fun you can have with snow for the first time in their lives. But of course, winters have not been what they were for a very long time.

I used to moan about the blending of seasons one into another, so I suppose I should welcome this proper seasonal weather, but it is cold, isn't it? Still, if it means we might get a proper summer, I'm prepared to put up with it, and this being England, it does give us something to talk about, doesn't it? :0)

Luckily, it didn't snow while we were in Edinburgh. It didn't even rain, though the wind was pretty icy at times. Knowing Edinburgh of old, I'd dressed accordingly and didn't mind the wind on my face.

I'd gone with no great expectation of any interesting shows in the galleries there, because the end of January often signifies the changeover of exhibitions and the galleries can be closed for re-hanging, but I was very pleasantly surprised. Best of all was the annual showing of the Vaughan Bequest of Turner Watercolours at the National Gallery Complex. Under the terms of the Bequest, the pictures can only be shown in January every year, which reduces their exposure to light and consequent fading. As a policy, it's a resounding success, because the colours in the paintings are still so vivid. If you ever get the chance to go to Edinburgh in January, make sure you don't miss them!

Next stop: Dundas Street, where most of the commercial galleries cluster. It's rare that I don't enjoy an exhibition at the Scottish Gallery and I was lucky to find the current show of work by Gordon Bryce still on (it finished the day after we were there). Lovely, fresh paintings, mostly about 2 feet square or smaller, showing a lightness of touch and complexity of colour produced by layering and scraping back.

Over the road at the Open Eye, we found another great show, this one by Colin Black. Working mainly on a small scale (most were about 6 or 7 inches), he makes landscapes with collage and paint on board. They're quite exquisite jewel-like constructs with a fascinating choice of collage elements. He makes particularly good use of pieces of map, which have the effect, not only of providing useful colour and lines, but at an almost subliminal level register as "landscape."

We ate well in the Mussel Inn on Rose Street - I had a kilo pot of mussels with chillies, garlic, ginger, coriander and cumin, and Pat opted for a kilo with leek, Dijon mustard and cream. Fantastic.

Pat's son, Andy had sent up some money for my birthday to be spent on some of the Bow Bar's extensive range of single malt whiskies, so that's what we did. What was left over, I spent in the Whisky Shop in Princes Mall on a bottle of Ben Riach 12 year old single malt whisky, unusual for a Speyside malt because of its added peat. And who could resist the added interest of a dark rum finish? Not me. It certainly gets my vote.

Isle of Arran

I liked Arran a lot. It reminded me of the Lake District and I suppose, geologically speaking, it might be part of the same mass.

Patsy123 and I had gone there to celebrate some friends' Ruby Wedding anniversary. For the first couple of nights we were in the house the friends had rented in Blackwaterfoot. Then, as more celebrants arrived, we moved into the Kinloch Hotel for a further few nights. Not a bad hotel, although every now and then we could hear a strange rumble like someone rolling a barrel down the corridor. Something to do with the heating system of the swimming pool, I believe.

They certainly served a fine full Scottish breakfast, with a choice of bacon, sausage, scrambled eggs, fried eggs, lorne sausage, black pudding, fried tomato, hash browns, tattie scones, baked beans and mushrooms. Far too much unhealthy food, really, but when you're paying for it as a B&B guest ... what the hell, I indulged.

I liked the barman in the lounge, too. He offered what Patsy123 called three measures - single, double and whoops, my hand slipped. My glass of whoops, my hand slipped Laphroaig went down well.

Iron age forts and standing stones litter the island, and in the evening of our first day there, we walked to the standing stones on Machrie moor. Even in the company of other people, there's something a little unsettling about these stones, still standing after 3700 years, witnesses to who knows what on this desolate open ground.

The weather was, as is usual on my trips to SW Scotland, not all it might be, but we got off to a good start. Our first full day there saw me sitting for a while, looking out at a sky and sea of the kind of blues I've only ever seen in the Mediterranean. Wagtails played on the washing line and sparrows seesawed up and down on the pampas grass. A little idyll.

We'd spent that day driving round the island. At Whiting Bay we stopped and walked up to Glenashdale Falls. Pretty good waterfall. While the others went back the way they'd come (why do some people think that flip-flops are the ideal form of walking gear?), Patsy123 and I walked on a little higher, then dropped down on a much better track. The way was lined with the kind of hedgerow I'd thought had disappeared forever - wild fuchsia, roses, crocosmia, rowan, old man's beard, honeysuckle, vetch and yellow ragwort, were only some of the plants I could dredge up from the memory of my long-ago A-level Botany course.
By Sunday, the sun being enjoyed by the rest of Britain was lost to Arran. We sat under a long skein of raincloud and it just poured all day. My sunburn of a only a couple of days previously was becoming a fast-fading memory. There's really only one thing to do on Arran in the pouring rain - go to Brodick Castle.

The Castle is owned by the National Trust for Scotland, and as it's apparently much cheaper to take out membership of that august body and use it to enter National Trust properties in England, we joined.

It was Victorian Day at the Castle. Every room was staffed by someone dressed in Victorian garb, ready to fill you in on the merits and peculiarities of that room. Very interesting, if soon forgotten. There were a lot of rather indifferent paintings on the walls, and some decidedly peculiar ones of fighting cocks which looked like people standing upright in cock costumes. I did find a couple of pictures by Watteau - not great, but interesting - and was very disappointed to find the only Turner in the collection was being restored.

The display of children's paintings in the cafe , some of them reworking Picasso's Weeping Woman , others on a theme of portraits with one eye covered (who knows?) was, however, a good accompaniment to the delicious vegetable soup.

All in all, a good trip, and I still had the midge bites on my scalp to remind me of it several days after I got back.