It’s not often we are in Elsrickle. In fact we had never heard of it until we were driving along the A721 and saw a big red barn and a cafe sign. It’s at the southern end of the Pentland Hills outside Edinburgh.

The café itself is off the road and is not situated in the red barn which is actually just a barn. It’s about 100 yards away from it. In this lovely open countryside, we can only imagine that the barn is a bit of a landmark and they just tell people to keep going until they see the Big Red Barn. The sign  says “foods, goods and woods” and there’s a reason for that.

Inside there’s a shop selling all sorts of ‘goods’ and a fairly large restaurant area selling ‘foods’.  The ‘woods’ stems from the fact that they have 80 acres of woodland with lots of signposted walks to explore.

A gentle breeze

Fruit scones were part of the ‘foods’ so we asked for one to share as well as some tea. Too warm to sit inside so we found a table out in the garden while we waited for our scone. There was a lovely gentle breeze that made the short wait very refreshing. Very soon we had everything we needed.  Our scone had plenty of fruit. No cream but plenty of butter and raspberry jam.  Not a topscone but enjoyable nevertheless. There’s quite a lot happening here with people coming and going all the time. A pied wagtail and a couple of house sparrows hopped around our table the whole time and apparently deer often come into the garden from the woodland but we didn’t see any.

Just beyond where we were sitting we could see a wee shed. My predilection with sheds in general meant that it required further examination. Turned out it was “The Little Red Pie Shed“. It was closed which was probably just as well since I also have a predilection for pies. Beside it is a  sheltered area where you could go with your pie to escape the worst of the effects of the fresh air. Hardly necessary these days since we’ve barely seen any rain for months and the sun has been shining continuously.

Priorities

Is this climate change? We’re not sure but over recent years we’ve certainly noticed an increase in summer temperatures and a bit less rainfall. The Big Red Barn is pretty ‘green’ with its biomass generator fed from its own woodland and a wind turbine making it almost self sufficient in energy. Two years ago we had COP26 climate conference held just a few miles from here in Glasgow.

There, almost 200 countries agreed the Glasgow Climate Pact. The whole thing was designed to try and help poor countries worst affected by climate change. The wealthiest countries, however, the ones that created the problem, refused to sign up to anything meaningful. They all informally agreed that aviation was a huge contributor to greenhouse gases but immediately after the conference they all said that returning their aviation industries to pre-pandemic levels was a top priority .. eh? And the public seem happy to go along with it so that they can go off on their holidays to even warmer places than Scotland. Our grandchildren are not going to thank us! It’s a mad world and rather oddly, as we look around the globe at what’s going on, climate change seems like the least of our problems … argh!

Here’s something even we didn’t know

Did you know that hemp has been grown in Scotland for centuries?Scotland exported cannabis to Jamaica long before it was grown there. Places like Cromarty used to employ 800 people in the hemp industry. Obviously, here it was only used for making sacks! Now it’s being recognised as having great potential in the treatment of Type 2 diabetes and the hemp growers want to expand. The problem is that by the time the growers have filled in all the government’s paperwork to get a licence, the growing season has finished. How very governmental!

ML12 6QZ        tel: 01968 682291       Big Red Barn

///shopping.heaven.reinstate