April 8 & 9: The life of Beatrix Potter and a failed search for wild cats
When I wrote you yesterday, Nicholas and I were sitting in the cafe at the Birham Institute, after visiting the Beatrix Potter museum. Apart from (obviously) reading her stories as a child, the only experience I had with Beatrix Potter was Miss Potter, where Bridget Jones falls in love with Ewan McGregor but doesn't marry him. The best part of that film was the opening sequence, where she goes into the countryside with a travel set of watercolours and starts to paint. From memory, some rabbits jump off the page. I haven't seen it in a long time, but I had a habit - when I was an early teenager - of renting a weekly DVD and watch it 10+ times while it was rented, so I should be able to recall the film better than this.
Anyway, the museum was beautiful. There were lots of green walls and it was laid out like a little children's wonderland with puppets to play with and lovely chests filled with specimens to draw and puzzles to do. Nicholas and I had quite a good time there, especially when we first arrived, because it was very quiet. It was much busier by the time we left, when we hastily completed the Easter egg hunt you could play (Nicholas scribbled at the top that we shouldn't win the prizes because we were adults).
Some specimens on Beatrix Potter's cupboard
Nicholas being a total dag and entertaining me with a puppet show.
The sign on the cupboard that housed the dress up equipment - you could be Jeremy Fisher or Mrs Tiggy-Winkle!
From the exhibition, we head due north to Cairngorm National Park, the biggest park in Britain. We didn't anticipate all the snow. The guy pictured below isn't even that snowy in comparison. The ski slopes are still open. We're camping here. Shit.
The sense of unease we felt driving up through the Cairngorms made us feel very, very Australian indeed.
We managed to find a nice campsite pretty easily, up in Drumguish. While I was fetching my Tangle Teezer from the car, Nicholas saw a buck and fawn. I was pretty jealous and cursed my tangly hair for a good while afterwards. Nicholas had two cups of noodles for dinner, but I couldn't handle more instant noodles, so had instant mashed potato and bananas instead. It's not as terrifying as it sounds, I promise. Mixed with the fancy salt we bought at Hoxton St Monster Supplies, it wasn't even half bad.
Our campsite at sunset. Don't let this picture fool you - it was much colder than it looks!
While Nicholas was taking the beautiful picture above, I was seasoning my instant potato with lavender salt. Classy.
Our view from our tent.
We woke up early the next morning, listening to the running stream and waterfall below us. I roused Nicholas, telling him we had to go looking for deer and rabbits. He obliged, and we set off through the woods to search for elusive critters. Spoiler: we found no deer. We did, however, head down to the river Spey and make the rookie mistake of washing our faces with melted snow water. Cold.
In the midst of our failed hunt for deer, I told Nicholas we needed to look for wild cats in Newtonmore. We read online that you can search for wild cats there and indeed you can - unfortunately, they last saw a wild cat about 18 months ago. To make up for the lack of sightings (wild cats are too clever) they've 'hidden' a heap of multicoloured plaster casts of wild cats around the town to hunt. We gave that a miss, but decided to do the trail anyway. Oh! On the way, we stopped by the Ruthven Barracks, which was close to where we camped. It was all very Outlander.
The river Spey
The Ruthven Barracks
The Scottish Wildcat
The Wildcat trail was particularly well-signed, which was lucky for us because we constantly misinterpreted the little printed map we were given at the Wildcat Centre. Not a promising start, considering we'll be doing much tricker treks, relying on Ordnance Survey maps and Nicholas' prowess with a compass. I never did too well with a compass so that's not been left up to me. I'll probably be in charge of snacks.
Handy signs along the Wildcat trail featured black cats!
Nicholas interrupting my panorama of the Cairngorm mountains from our little walk
The Wildcat Trail wasn't too much of an intense mountain hike, but led you through the backs of various local paddocks. The Outdoor Access Code in Scotland allows you to walk on other peoples' land, as long as you close the gate and don't disturb their things basically. I'm pretty sure they can't even tell you to get off unless you're doing the wrong thing. The tourist in me thinks that this is great. The potential future Scottish housewife in me (and private person) thinks this is very irritating. I wouldn't want strangers walking around on my stuff. The coolest part about it, though, was all of the farm animals! I made sure not to think of their fate as we cooed over all the babies. So many tiny black-faced lambs! As we walked through another unknown Scottish resident's yard, we chanced upon a pair of very hungry horses. Initially, I was really panicky that they were going to attack us or smell the melted chocolate in my pockets, but we eventually made friends with them. They were very soft and smelled a bit like Puck.
Having cuddles with a stranger's horse
A poor, blurry shot of Nicholas with the horses. I was worried the sound of the camera shutter would alarm them, so I took a crappy picture with my phone.
Not long after we left the horses, we found a stream to wash our hands in. Convenient.
From the Wildcat Trail, and having given up on finding any wildcats, we head back to the car. We made friends with many border collies, picked up some homemade millionaire shortbread from an honesty box out front of a local's house (it was delicious) and chanced upon our first red squirrel - not a 'grey import', which is apparently what our other encounters were. I was keen to head to the Highland Folk Museum for the afternoon, which is an open-air museum showing various scenes from Scottish homelife from the 1700's to 1950's. As our Scottish friend pointed out before we went, it was the 'perfect place to act out any Jamie and Claire fantasies'. Another reference to the all-powerful, Outlander. This makes it sound like I'm obsessed with Outlander, which I'm not. We are in Scotland, though.
I got to grind wheat like they did in the 1700's. I decided that - if I was to be sent back in time via standing stone - I would marry rich and avoid grinding wheat because it's hard. Also, for all its romanticism, I'd miss electric lights and heating.
All the other time travellers in our 18th century township.
The Clock room
Apart from the 1700's township, the part I enjoyed most at the museum was a reconstruction of a clockmaker's workshop. It once belonged to a man named Alexander McIntyre who, apart from making clocks and repairing bicycles, managed to fashion a range of very clever tools. One was comprised of a drill press and a lathe and a table saw. All three were ran off one treadle. Another was a reciprocating saw for metal, made by repurposing parts of a Singer sewing machine. The table was also littered with designs for clocks, which reminded me of the infamous da Vinci sketches.
The cold overnight - combatted slightly by the fact that I bought an extra sleeping bag - has meant that my Ross River Fever-induced arthritis has been pretty unbearable at times, so we forwent sleeping tonight and are held up in a room at the Glen Hotel in Newtonmore. It's pretty cosy and had breakfast and Wifi included, so it won on all fronts. The only improvement I can think of would be to include a bathtub, but you can't have everything.
Tomorrow is our last day of sunshine for a little while, so we're heading north to Aviemore to pick up some walking maps and are going to do a reasonable hike (hopefully by a loch!)
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