June 20th: Tarland, Pitmedden, Aberdeenshire
And some other places in between. Today was pretty glorious; the rain has finally left us (for the time being at least) and I had to figure out how to deal with glare and running the air conditioner while we drove. These are problems I’m perfectly happy to have. Unlike most days, today we have a more pinned-down endpoint. We bought tickets to the Aberdeen Highland Games for the 21st, and made camper reservations at a campground nearby, so we have places to go. But first, sheeps!
It is pretty tricky getting good photographs of a thing when you are trying to actually watch the thing. So, I’ll show you a couple of random videos of a few moments when we were at Aberdeenshire Sheepdogs getting a demo of how the dogs work sheep. One of the things I learned today was how they start training their dogs. Starting with the sheep in a pen, the dog on one side, the owner uses her hands and body language to show that she wants the dog to go clockwise or widdershins. After a while, she’ll start adding voice commands when she does the thing, so then eventually the dog will respond to just the voice commands. These dog apparently don’t even need treats for good behavior- they love working sheep so much that the work is the reward.
The farm where we saw the demo keep about 1000 head of sheep, mostly for meat. They sell the wool (and we bought a ball of yarn spun from their sheeps), but it’s mostly just to offset the cost of the shearing. She did a shearing demo and we got to see some of the Hebridian breed’s dark wool- it had a nice hand to it; not a super-long staple but I bet (especially since Chrissy mentioned it) that if they coated the sheep and were careful about the shearing that they could sell at least that wool at a good price. The farming couple had a pretty cute kid, who was two and running around in dinosaur wellies the whole time.
After that, we headed over to the Pitmedden garden. The tea shop was closed for undetermined reasons (it was Saturday, or maybe just: Scotland played Morocco in the World Cup at 11p the night before), so we had lunch in the van. I cannot stress enough how great it is to drive around with a fridge and coffeemaker wherever we go. In Pitmedden, I realized that most of what I know about Fancy Gardens is from where Terry Pratchett makes fun of it. So when asked about what a haha is, my mental process was “it’s a hoho, but not as deep, but a hoho is a made up thing in Discworld books made by BS Johnson, the terrifying gardener, what could a haha actually be." Anyway, I enjoy relating to random strangers the weird stuff my brain does when it is thinking, and it is thinking all the time.
The garden itself is pretty great. There’s some lovely views, sculpture by John Maine, and quite a few sundials. I don’t have a lot to say about it other than: if you’re in the area, you should go.
I mean, I’ve been to fancier gardens, but the best garden is one you’re in, ideally surrounded by bees.
The garden also had a small farming life museum- a lot of artifacts in a couple of historic houses. It felt more like an inventory of stuff than a really active museum, although the staged living room made Chrissy say “hey, it looks like the farm set for All Creatures Great and Small”
Anyway, I don’t want to seem like I’m being mean to the garden, it really was very relaxing and peaceful. I had a lovely time. I just felt the farm bits were a bit weird.
They did have over 100 varieties of apple growing in the garden, and every year they sell all the apples they grow there. One of the pecularities of my blogging platform is that if I try to put two images in a row, it helpfully puts them next to each other instead of in a series. So I am kind of pushed to add a paragraph of text between each photo, if I want to show a lot of them. Sorry I didn’t have anything exciting to say here.
After the garden, we headed to Tolquhon castle (pronounced ta-HON, more or less). The castle was built in the late 1500s by a merchant who wanted to impress his neighbors, or maybe for tax purposes. The important thing here is that it was a castle with a gate and little arrow slits and artillery holes, but it had never been involved in a battle (except right at the end, where the Laird living there had to get forcibly evicted). The whole place was more or less just a big house, for living in; it served no strategic or military purpose.
The family that owned the castle was more or less a bunch of early-renaissance merchant lords, it seems. I’m still learning a bit about the history of Scotland (we got a book), so I know it wasn’t all Jacobites and Mel Gibson now. Did you know about the Darien Scheme? The Scots were like “oh, all that money you can make in Imperialism, we should get in on that", and they decided to colonize the part of Panama we now call the Darien Gap. Which, if you remember from Pluribus (you watched Pluribus, right? (you should watch Pluribus.)) is double-super uninhabitable. Like it’s an awful place to colonize. Not as bad as trying to colonize, say Mars, but it’s up there in a way to burn huge amounts of capital. When the scheme failed, most of Scotland’s wealthiest families (and a lot of the less-wealthy ones) all lost their money, and the Laird lost this castle (so he got evicted by redcoats).
After that, we stopped in at a farm store recommended by Michelle from Aberdeenshire Sheepdogs; they supply some of the lamb at that store, and we bought some scotch lamb. We also stocked up on enough for three more dinners, and some lunches, all local stuff. The carrots were covered in dirt, so you know they’re going to be good.
Today, we drove through the town of Udny three times. We stopped in early before the sheepdog demo to go to The Coffee Apothecary and get some beans (I was going to run out no matter what, but I’d spilled 30g of ground coffee on the floor because I was doing too many things at once), then down to the sheeps, then back through to the castle, then back out to get to the campsite.
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