Rothbury Musings

Finished my giant knitting at last – not quite as fast as it was made out.

Hi, just a few words while it’s still January.

We’ve had our usual round of marmalade making, including the now regular mystery of where do all the jam jar lids go?

Belinda and I have been doing quite well with our joint New Years Resolution of going on the rowing machine for 10 minutes everyday. We’re not very strict – you are allowed to catch up if you miss a day, but its still not allowing us to eat as much cake as we really would like!

Christmas is coming … we bought a sweet little Christmas tree for the cottage today, and a big one from the Forestry Commission down the road for the house’s  living room. Currently it’s sitting in the back yard drinking. We’ll decorate it tomorrow.

Two lots of cooking this weekend. Herman the German Friendship Cake and Hot Pepper Jam.

Clare and Ross Ketteridge brought us  a portion of starter and recipe for this cake. You let it brew, stir and feed it for 8 days and then quarter it, add more flour, eggs and chopped apples and bake. The other 3 portions you’re supposed to give away to unsuspecting/grateful friends in a sort of culinary version of a chain letter. Dense, moist, bready cake to die for!  We cooked all 4 quarters today as the perpetual motion of this cooking is not proving advantageous to my waist line. AND we neither ran nor biked today as we were too jaded from last night’s 40th birthday murder mystery party!

Ready to pop them in the freezer for Christmas guests – cinamonny, appley alternative to mince pies.

He doesn’t just bring cake starter kits to friends. Have a look at Ross’s website for the lovely furniture that he makes from his workshop in the Scottish Borders. We’re about to order a wardrobe and mantlepiece.

Hot Pepper Jam was the Rothbury equivalent of this BBC recipe. Chillies from our own birdseye plants growing on windowsills, garlic from the allotment. We doubled the recipe – and doubled the chillies again (40 didn’t look that many…). And doubled the cooking time. It’s sweet, hot and good! And renamed appropriately.

Must get out this week!

We’re back on line. We’ve had a bit of an up and down Autumn – and it’s now definitely Winter here. A morning of scraping frozen windscreens and frosty fields. We had a big get together last weekend to send off our good friend Chris Mearns – beers were drunk and bikes were ridden. He would have smiled to see our tandem dusted off!

Do come and stay with us over the chilly months – our woodburners are lit!

Yee-ha! Tim and Belinda has lended me their weblog thing so I can write some stuff about stuff. I’ve lots of things to say, about them, about Rothbury and Northumberland. First up I need to talk about jam. Their jam. Not a predicament – I’m still investigating. A preserve. I’ve just finished some of their rhubarb jam. Crafted from foliage from their allotment. Not sure when they made it, or even when we fetched it but I do know every carefully heated piece of bread, nutured on its way to becoming toast, was then spread with butter and then the jam. A very fine jam indeed. Not too much but just enough. Sweet and sharp and subtle and robust. Bloody lovely. Worth staying in their cottage for although I don’t think the jam is guaranteed. A good time almost certainly. Now – have I mentioned the running and cycling and space?

I found a new mug to match two beloved ones bought over 10 years ago in Lyme Regis.  I was on holiday with my friend Jo with one of my many attempts and ruses to write up my thesis. There were no good mugs in the cottage, and I bought these two blue ones by a west country potter called Rupert Andrews. The third lemony-yellow one found when perusing Newcastle’s art gallery The Biscuit Factory has the same surprise after you’ve drained your dregs; an ammonite.

We haven’t strictly got crows out the front of our house in Rothbury – they’re actually rooks and jackdaws. The rooks nest together, in a rookery and jackdaws are even smaller and have beady little eyes. It hasn’t stopped us from treating ourselves to another crow picture by Sarah Morpeth (Twa Corbies), a local artist, who also makes amazing artist’s books, with the words flying off the pages. Her gallery was open in Elsdon as part of Northumberland’s recent open studio events. We are planning to run bike rides between them next year with gourmet lunches. Coming?

I’ve just rustled around the internet – and found a visual artist with a discussion of the origin of this old Scottish poem, David Watson Hood.

We have been lax – and busy – and not posted. We promise though that Spring and Summer have shone beautifully here for the last few months! We have been at home riding, gardening, cooking, eating, running and walking – oh and canoeing in Canyonlands, Utah (Tim sneaked in a day too on Slickrock and Pipedream, Moab).

We have plans afoot to kayak later in the year in Utah. Tim hopes to sneak some biking in … apparently this kayaking place (Moab) is also quite good for bikes (!)

So … in the meantime we are perfecting our swimming – in an attempt to make the whole experience safer! This has enabled us to sample three of the local swimming pools.

Rothbury has a lovely warm little pool (15 x 10 metres) which is part of the Coquetdale Swimming and Fitness Centre next to the middle school. It has a gym as well. Tonight there was only one other swimmer, though a few more in the gym. We got an ample half hour in before women’s hour started at 19.30. We have had evenings and mornings where we have just been us two. It was recently refurbished – and must have one of the nicest views, over to Cragside, of any pool in the world. Its opening hours are sometimes frustrating.

Alnwick’s is part of the Willowburn Sports and Leisure Centre, on the way out to the north bound A1. This has a medium learner pool – which really helped our confidence initially, and a 25 metre full size pool, with scheduled lane swimming. Tim has been having his learner classes here.

We have even ventured further south to another fantastic pool in Blyth to receive one to one lessons from a friend’s daughter. The progress we both made with just one lesson was great – and we plan at least 2 more of them.

For the first time in my life I feel comfy wearing goggles – a revelation! We will keep you posted!