Horsehoe Inn

18th December 2022 billpaterson1@me.com 16 Comments

Last time we were anywhere near the Horseshoe Inn in Eddleston we were at the Barony Castle Hotel. In the grounds of the hotel there is the Great Polish Map of Scotland. A remarkable concrete structure in a pond made by Polish war veterans in 1979.

Great Polish Map of Scotland — Photo taken from a display board to show the size (40mx50m) and location, the hotel is top right

Anyway, the Horseshoe Inn stands at the end of the road that leads up to the Barony Castle and that’s as far as we were going today.

Unwanted visitors

Everyone knows that horseshoes are lucky without perhaps knowing why. Let us help you with some well established facts. Many years ago the whole of northern Europe was inhabited by fairies, elves and goblins. When Celtic tribes invaded their lands they took refuge in the forests and started wearing green to camouflage themselves. Rightly or wrongly, these little people were blamed for many of the misfortunes suffered by the settlers. The relationship between the two groups was at best uneasy. However, it was quickly understood that the elves feared the metal weapons of their enemies … they were afraid of iron! Hence folk took to hanging horseshoes above their doors to discourage unwelcome little visitors.

Logic

All of the above is absolutely true, however, there is still much debate about which way a horsehoe should be hung in order to derive maximum benefit. Some think the two ends should point up the way to prevent luck falling out. Others think it should be the other way so that the luck falls on those below. We lean towards the former because logically with both ends down the way it would never be able to retain enough luck to disperse. Don’t think about it too much. The big question was how lucky the Horsehoe Inn would be for us.

It’s a real traditional kind of place with lots of beamed ceilings and open fires. The restaurant was very busy so we opted for the bar which was quiet. There was a very comprehensive menu but we were just passing through so coffee and a scone was all we wanted. They didn’t ask if we wanted the scone toasted but that’s the way it was when it arrived. Sitting by a cosy log fire eating scones and drinking coffee we felt nicely cocooned from the realities of the world outside. Lucky indeed.

Merry Christmas

The World Cup finishes today with a final which is not being billed as Argentina v France but rather Messi v Mbappé. On account of my sister living in Nice along with the Auld Alliance and all that, we will be supporting France.

Unbelievably, in three days time it will be the shortest day of the year, yeah! As well as light the longer days also bring hope and heralds the beginning of another year.

As we prepare for a family invasion over the festive season it just remains for us to wish all our readers a very Merry Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year. We’ve very much appreciated your comments and support over the past year. May all your horseshoes be the right way up!

EH45 8QP. tel: 01721 730225 Horsehoe Inn

///played.rested.extension

Scones, Top

Schloss Roxburghe 2

12th December 2022 billpaterson1@me.com 1 Comment

This post is entitled Schloss Roxburghe 2 which is a bit unusual since it was only October when we were last here. Normally, years pass before we revisit places. In our previous visit we talked about all the ambitious building work that was taking place at the time. This time we had been informed that many of the changes had now been completed so we were back to see for ourselves.

External view of Schloss Roxburghe showing new rooms — new 58 additional rooms and the pool area

Hardships

Of course, we cannot pretend that this involved any hardship on our part. This place is definitely not noted for hardship! That said, we had hoped that the heated outdoor swimming pool, sauna and plunge pool would have been completed but no, not quite … argh! The weather has taken quite a frosty turn … ideal for a swim in a lovely warm pool. I’d even packed my Speedos! Disappointing but we reckoned we could survive that sort of hardship. But would there be any more hardships?

The spa at Schloss Roxburghe — Spa reception

Well yes, the spa area wasn’t quite finished either. But the new gym was open 24/7.

By the time we had walked the length of the gym and looked at all the apparatus for inflicting self induced torture we both felt quite light headed … we needed refreshment and somewhere to sit down.

The State Room at Schloss Roxburghe — the State room

What a State!

The State Room was the answer … another splendid addition since our last visit. A cosy log fire, very comfortable surroundings … and a bar! A place to relax with a whisky or a G&T … or even a scone.

Last time we thought the Schloss Roxburghe scones rivalled those of Fonab Castle as ‘best scone in the world‘ … quite a claim! We certainly didn’t imagine that they would have dropped their standards since October but thought we should check, just in case. We have to be rigorous … don’t we? No problem they were just as good and, of course, served perfectly by some of the friendly helpful staff. At the end of the day, it was simply a case of reinforcing our original topscone award with another!

No pampering south of the border

In the evening we had the pleasure of experiencing the brand spanking new Charlie’s restaurant. Its name commemorates a visit by Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745. He was about to set off into England with his army and presumably felt the need for some pampering. He doubtless knew he wasn’t going to find any of that where he was going.

Charlies restaurant at Schloss Roxburghe — Charlie’s restaurant

In contrast to the cosy restaurant we enjoyed last time in the old hotel, Charlie’s provides a gleaming modern dining experience. It was great and our dinner was super!

Picture of child on horseback at Schloss Roxburghe — this is how it used to be for children before iPads

Autumn/Winter Collection

During our stay, Schloss Roxburghe was playing host for the launch of Lyle & Scott’s prestigious Autumn /Winter collection. Surrounded by its own golf course and just down the road from the town of Hawick where Lyle & Scott started off in 1874, this was an ideal venue. They’d invited guests from all over the world.

All we can say is that if you are going to impress clients with everything Scotland has to offer this isn’t a bad place to do it. We actually thought that the Lyle & Scott brand had disappeared many years ago … how wrong could we be? Great to see it, alive and kicking and very much a global player.

Britain is not much a global player these days. It seems to come bottom of almost every league table and seems destined to be in recession for a long time yet. The much vaunted International Agreements with non-EU countries are actually costing us money! The whole country is grinding to a halt with industrial unrest. And just when you thought things could not get any worse, England has been eliminated from the World Cup by the ‘old enemy’, France. The economy may be disappearing down the plug hole but we’ll doubtless be treated to days and days of mindless analysis of why this calamity happened.

The invisible man

We do have new Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, to sort all this out, of course … or do we? After a series of blatantly incompetent Prime Ministers we now have an invisible one. Even his own party are nicknamed him “the invisible Prime Minister“. To avoid all these rather annoying irritations we recommend moving into Schloss Roxburghe permanently. As you sip your whisky by one of the log fires you’ll be blissfully unaware of anything other than the need for another log … and even that is taken care of.

TD5 8JZ tel: ‭01573 450331 Schloss Roxburghe

///marinated.wriggled.greeting

Scones, topweird

Hirsel Cottage Tearoom

8th December 2022 billpaterson1@me.com 5 Comments

When Harold McMillan had to resign due to ill health in 1963 he was controversially succeeded as PM by Sir Alec Douglas-Home, 14th Earl of Home (pronounced Hume). The 3000 acre Hirsel Estate near Coldstream has been the family home since 1611. It wasn’t very long ago that, in the UK, you weren’t allowed to vote if you didn’t own land … preferable great swathes of it. As an aristocrat Sir Alec spent his life being showered by honours and gifts. His tenure as PM lasted less than a year, though compared to recent incumbents of the post, that’s a long time.

External view of the Hirsal — Photo of the Hirsel by Stephen Whitehorne. It’s not open to the public

So here we were driving past the wall that surrounds the estate. Pat had noted that there was a tearoom so we thought we should investigate. We went in through a typically large estate gate and then drove for what seemed like miles on a tiny little road with no signs indicating a cafe or anything else for that matter. Eventually, we had to stop and ask a man with a leaf blower. It seems obvious now but we had come in through the wrong gate … what are we like? Never mind, eventually we made it to the Hirsel Cottage Tearoom.

The tearoom is part a group of buildings that form a kind of arts and crafts centre. There’s a pottery, a glass studio and a nice little museum. When we walked in we got a lovely warm welcome but the first thing we noticed was this.

A bit odd

They had two different kinds … lemon and blueberry and spiced mixed fruit. … ooo! Pat opted for the latter so I went for the other.

Quite big for our taste but both were very nice. They came nicely presented with butter, cream and jam. Pat’s was beautifully spiced and mine was very moist as you might expect from a lemon and blueberry combo. Slightly odd scones perhaps but we thought they were very worthy of a topweirdscone. Well done the Hirsel Cottage Tearoom.

Ownership?

The Hirsel Estate runs right down to the River Tweed. It made us think that it’s not only scones that can be weird, people are weird as well. They get very upset about land ownership. When we obtain land almost the first thing we do is build walls or borders to keep others out. Don’t think that there is any other member of the animal kingdom that behaves quite like this. Swallows and Wildebeest just go wherever suits them. It can get ugly, just look at Ukraine!

We say ‘border, you say ‘boundary’

When you stand on the banks of the Tweed and look across the twenty or so yards of slowly flowing water all you can see is England. At this point the the border runs down the middle of the river … weird. Unionists, of course, like to call it the “boundary”. Calling it a “border” would imply that Scotland might actually be a country in its own right. Gosh, the power of words!

We mention this only because the former Labour Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, was wheeled out again this week. This is a sure sign that Westminster feels the Union is in some sort of danger. Last time he appeared was back in 2014 during the Scottish Independence Referendum. All the panicking Unionist parties appointed him as their spokesman with a single remit “save the Union”.

Promises, promises!

Back then they all agreed to “the Vow” which promised that if Scotland wanted to stay in the EU, it had to vote no to independence. It also promised Home Rule … according to Gordon, the next best thing to independence. That, of course, begged the question “why not just go for the best thing?” In the end it wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. Will we see submarines patrolling the Tweed?

TD12 4LW tel: 01890 883645. Hirsel Cottage FB

///boil,fatter.repayment

ps: We are indebted to our Marco Island correspondents for this photo of Sconehenge. There’s nothing we can say except we thought, for the sake of structural strength, they would have chosen plain scones!

Scones, self-service

James’ Coffee Bar

4th December 2022 billpaterson1@me.com 5 Comments

Here’s another random scone. When you walk along Main Street in the peaceful little village of Doune, apart its rather formidable castle, you probably wouldn’t ever imagine that it was once famous for the manufacture of guns. Yet from the mid 1600s to the late 1700s pistol making was the main industry here. All that is long since gone and the reason we come here nowadays is not for guns but for dresses. Or, whenever we think we have accumulated too much money! Woodlane of Doune is an excellent ladies dress shop for sorting that problem out.

It was when Pat was in a changing room that I was asked if we were going across the road to the Buttercup Cafe afterwards. I said that we had been there recently and thought we would try and find somewhere else. “Oh, you should try James’ Coffee Bar” was the reply “It’s open air but it has a roof … and it’s not far from here.“

Being outside

We’d never heard of it. We were intrigued … open air in December? With what little money we had left we took our leave of Woodlane carrying several large bags. The ladies in the shop, however, had given us clear directions to James’ Coffee Bar so we set off to find it. It’s in the middle of nowhere on a road that we never use so that’s why we hadn’t come across it before. It sits adjacent to Stockbridge Nurseries Garden Centre and takes the form of one of those American Airstream aluminium trailers. The seating area is ‘outdoors’ but the roof is extensive and on a dull but nice day like today it was rather good to be ‘outside’.

Local products

The first thing we saw at the counter was the scones and just a few other cakes and things. Then we realised there was huge menu on the wall beside where we were standing. Eventually the order was two bacon rolls and a fruit scone to share. The girls in the trailer were delightful and soon had us sorted with everything we needed. No fine china here but, of course, in an establishment like this that would have been totally inappropriate. Our scone came in a cardboard tub along with a jar of jam, a wee tub of cream and a wooden knife. The coffee, Grumpy Mule was good but no as good as our favourite Cat’s Pyjamas. Puzzles us why people use companies hundreds of miles away while there are local products which are just as good, if not better.

Other than that we really enjoyed James’. It’s a family run enterprise born from the restrictions forced upon them by COVID. When we were finished we simply tipped everything into the appropriate recycling bins. For us it was just a little out of the ordinary and a bit of fun. We hope they go from strength to strength. Now that we know where it is the summer will doubtless see us back at James’.

Football business

For us the World Cup is proving to be not so much fun. In spite of FIFA pretending that they run and organise the event this one is pretty obviously being run by Qatar. Nothing happens without their approval. The whole thing, right down to them piping bird song into newly created parks is just a bit weird. The promised ‘greenest’ World Cup ever has proved to be a joke. Human rights seem to be another joke with all our home teams being too lily livered to wear an armband. Christiano Renaldo ‘not being sure‘ whether to accept £173m for a two year contract in Saudi perhaps illustrates all that is wrong with the modern business of football! AND, we have to have something to moan about!

FK15 9ND Tel: 07936 078661 James’ Coffee Bar

///star.cello.megawatt

Ordinary, Scones

Coffee Jam

1st December 2022 billpaterson1@me.com 5 Comments

Some readers seem to think that we go to a lot of trouble by travelling miles and miles just to report on a scone. It doesn’t really work like that! It just sort of happens in a completely random kind of way. This post from Coffee Jam in Renfrew might help illustrate the point.

The other day we went online to bid on a lot at McTears Auction House in Glasgow. We didn’t get what we wanted. We were outbid by quite a long way … boo!. However, in the random nature of auctions another lot took our fancy. It was a couple of Clutha glass vases made by James Couper & Sons in Glasgow circa 1900. Their factory closed in the 1930s but it was situated just a couple of hundred yards from where we worked for many years. Liberty of London named it Clutha (“cloudy” in Gaelic) to identify the deliberately bubbly, streaky nature of the glass. Needless to say, although we hadn’t meant to buy anything like this, we somewhat randomly pressed the successful ‘bid’ button. All of a sudden, they were ours!

Today we were collecting them from McTears. We had the vases safely cosseted in bubblewrap for the journey home when we realised that Renfrew, the county town of Renfrewshire, was just about a mile further west. Neither of us thought we had ever been there. Odd, because it’s right beside Glasgow airport but all the main roads seem to bypass Renfrew itself. Randomly, at the gate out of McTears, instead of turning right for home we turned left for Renfrew. Like many post-industrial towns it looks a little bit tired but hints of a glorious past abound. Not least of these is the town hall, a magnificent confection in stone, which now houses a museum to celebrate all things “Renfrew”.

Fascinating facts

There was loads of things of interest. The Renfrew horde of 674 silver pennies dating from the the late thirteenth century was discovered here. It was in an earthenware jug dug up in 1963. There was a set of dominoes made by French POWs held here during the Napoleonic Wars. And, did you know that the first shots fired in the skies over Britain in WWII were fired by George Pinkerton flying a Spitfire from Renfrew. He attacked a German fighter over the River Forth. And, the first aircraft to cross the Atlantic east to west, the R34 airship, was built by local company, Beardmore & Co, in 1919. One of the crew had to parachute out to help the ground crew in the US who didn’t know how to land it. So many fascinating things that we didn’t know about Renfrew. We needed a scone and some tea to help digest it all.

Spare?

Randomly, on the other side of the street from the town hall was Coffee Jam. There was no evidence of scones anywhere and when we asked if they had any there was consternation! Our girl, Christy, went off to the kitchen and from there she signaled with two fingers that they had two. We signaled back with a thumbs up and some enthusiastic head nodding! When she brought the scones to our table we asked if she had baked them. No, the chef had baked them earlier but we were extremely lucky that they had two scones ‘spare’. And with that she turned to help another customer. We were intrigued, how does a scone come to be ‘spare’?

Each scone were quite big, nicely warmed and, although the WeWantPlates brigade would not have been happy, pleasingly presented on a slate. They were accompanied by large bowls of cream and jam. Although the cream was ‘scooshie’ the consistency was good compared to some we’ve had in the past. Sometimes it dissolves into liquid almost immediately! And loads of jam … maybe this was why it’s called ‘Coffee Jam’? We enjoyed our scones even though they didn’t quite merit a topscone. Coffee Jam has only been on the go for less than a year and has already won awards. The owners are obviously trying very hard. We wish them all the best.

Kindred spirits

When we went to pay we couldn’t resist asking what a ‘spare’ scone was. Turns out that they normally only provide scones with their afternoon teas. So the ones we got were ‘spare’. Now we understand though we do think that their scones are a bit on the big side for an afternoon tea. it also turned out that Christy was a fellow photographer. she only works in Coffee Jam part time to help her sister out. Although at opposite ends of our respective career paths we had a great chat about the photography business and hers in particular … SMPhotography.

Random thoughts

On our way home we passed the luxury liner MV Ambition which is moored in the Clyde. It’s been hired by the Scottish government as temporary accommodation for Ukrainian refugees. There’s another cruise liner in Edinburgh being used for the same purpose. There’s not much news about this, so not sure what to think. There’s lots of news, however, about the most corrupt sporting event ever, the Qatar World Cup. Apparently it’s actually supposed to matter! The MV Ambition made us realise that we do need to spare a thought for the Russian troops dug into hellish trenches for the winter. Of course, we need to spare a thought for the Ukrainian troops as well but at least they know why they’re there.

Hopefully you can now see how, through the random nature of our lives, a random purchase in an auction can randomly lead to a spare scone.

PA4 8QD tel: 0141 560 2714 Cafe Jam Insta

///paying.racks.copper

Scones, history and a dollop of politics

Monthly Archives: December 2022