Scottish Roots

Firstly let me just say: I have already written most of this while sitting waiting in Edinburgh Airport for a fight delayed about 2 hours... but my technology has let me down this time. Ah well. Let's see how the words flow second time round!
I've discovered a few things here in the UK... One is that the pasture-based farmers are a pretty tight knit bunch - where ever they are in the UK they all seem to know one another, and may have even been to each other's farms. This network meshes with the Nuffield one very nicely too I've found - or maybe it is just the people that Tom Phillips suggested I connect with (thanks Tom).

I've discovered that many of the soils here are comparable to some of the wettest ones we have in NZ - rushes growing thickly on sloped ground and the earth kind of spongy underfoot, though the farmers are saying it is relatively dry at the moment!
Working the various subsidies and grants available is seen by some as one of the farm's 'enterprises' (while they remain available), and by some as a means to be an 'existence farmer' (not my words!).
And I've discovered that a phone call from the right person does what google and third party emails couldn't achieve (not really a 'discovery', more something I've been grateful for)!
Finally I discovered a landscape that was home to some of my forebears, albeit only for a couple of generations.
Let me expand on a couple of these discoveries.

Piltanton Burn, Galloway Coast

I was very keen to speak with people involved with a voluntary farmer initiative to improve water quality in a catchment in Galloway, southwest Scotland. As I said, my emails and those of some handy third parties, even by the day I had planned to drive to that region, had yielded no response. I thought of not going - it is quite a loop if there was to be noone there to talk to! A farmer I had visited the day before had given a contact of his near the area, but I hadn't got hold of him yet. I calmly set off from my last England stop, hoping for phone reception (not that great in the UK after all) and replies.

Bonus hospitaity - with a view

I called the unknown contact and was richly rewarded by both the offer of a place to stay and an assurance he could talk to the farmer I was after from the catchment programme! I had also just got from another third party (a contact of an earlier host) the phone number of the the consultant. I was away! I drove north happily knowing I would at least get to do some of what I had wanted!
I experienced the full 'dead stopped' on the M6 - after about 20 min we slowly started moving - only to be directed to the off-ramp and sent off onto the wondrous country roads of England. Following my nose (and quite a ot of other traffic, I admit!) I made it safely back to the next on-ramp and carried on my way! Tick that experience off!
Dumfies and Galloway was drizzling with a typical scotch mist hugging the slopes and rolling into the bay. I was reminded of the nick name I had at high school. The ones that thought they knew such things labelled me either scotch mist or haggis on the strength of the surname McCabe. Little did they know that McCabe is really an Irish name - I never told, in case the joking would be worse!
This reminded me further of the family research I had done a couple years earlier on the Ancestry website - Peter and Mary McCabe had left Ireland for Scotland during the potato famine... hadn't they lived somewhere in Ayrshire, the next county, and where I was to stay after Galway?
I was to stay in New Cumnock... the family tree said the McCabes were in Strathave, not too far away. But lo and behold, my great great grandmother, who married Peter and Mary's son had been born in, you guessed it, New Cumnock!

The River Nith, that 'the Irish dug'

Robert Burns lived and wrote at New Cumnock

It was quite surreal driving into the area. a place of big, but not sharp hills, forestry, farming, wind energy and mining. I know my forebears here would have been very poor - what would their lives have been like?
My hosts in New Cumnock described it (before hearing my great great gramndma was born there) as 'not very salubrious'. They also talked of the Irish labourers that had helped dig the river channel below the farm out of what was a swamp - and built the railway, on wool bales they say to help keep it from sinking.
I indulged in a detour through Strathaven on my way to Edinburgh on Saturday. A pretty wee town, compete with castle ruins - again a place of industrial revolution action - mining and milling. Though no McCabes would have had cash for a headstone, or perhaps even a proper grave site, it was interesting to roam through the graveyard.

The oldest headstones went back into the 1700's and the site includes 'martyr's graves' - the 'Covenanters' who had resisted the government's interference with their reformed religion. This would be an interesting place to know more of the history! Maybe another time...
To complete my stay in Edinburgh I had a double treat - staying with my lovely cousin and her equally lovely family for two nights near the city's heart, and having Mo, lately of DairyNZ, come all the way up from Worcester for breakfast and a roam around Edinburgh Castle.

Actually the other treat, Fiona assured me, was the glorious day in which to enjoy it all (it isn't always like that they say!).
Onto the land of tulips and windmills next...

South West England - Phase 3 Nuffield underway

Day 5 in the UK!
Already I've done a few miles ( and they are miles here of course!).
I've had some adventures already too... Sadly some of them are the result of having left something behind.
One noteworthy adventure comprised driving a rental car from near Victoria Station in London, with just a small scale map, willingness to have ago and hope...

The GPS I should have had, as I had carefully already purchased a local sim card, with data, was back at the Farmer's Club, where I'd stayed my first night.
I found myself driving through the park surrounding Buckingham Palace ... where something as vulgar as road signs seemed to have been deemed unnecessary! Just as I was coming to the conclusion I'd have to stop & reexamine the map, or even ask directions, a chain store name caught my eye . I'd seen this before - though I may have done so anywhere. Looking around further I spotted a road sign I recognised. I knew how to get where I wanted to from there!
I got my phone back - but I'm sorry to say that already I have left something else behind... I'll say no more about that right now...

South West England is beautiful. Devon with steeper, more frequent hills and Cornwall softly rolling . Both prettily patchworked at present - golden harvest and green pastures - fields all defined by the characteristic hedges, little seen in N. Z.
The tight high-walled lanes pose a challenge to the uninitiated.

 I'm glad one of my hosts pointed out that despite the soft leafy appearance they are very unforgiving, generally with a rockwall base hiding behind the bushes. Never choose to swipe the hedge in the face of a tight squeeze... Politeness carries the day, with someone always willing to wait or pull into a wee hint of a layby. Its actually far higher adrenaline than my previous sentence conveys... but again, enough said!
Stock disease features high in farmers' conversations. TB is very topical, as many of you on Twitter may know. But the legacy of both BSE and Foot & Mouth still drive choices today.
I'm grateful N.Z. farmers haven't experienced such a scale of stock disease to date.

Interesting, in discussing my topic of farmers' responses to limits, I've noticed that the same "limit" can be described differently, depending on the person's perception of the impact of meeting that limit.

Gorse is a menace here too, if not controlled by burning and stock pressure

Good winter grazing coming up under skeletal gorse remains.

Heathered stage of the moorland cycle.

Tomorrow I head north ... and into Bonnie Scotland on Wednesday