Tag Archives: Tory

Judith Glue Café

It’s our last day on Orkney. Although the wind is still blowing as hard as ever we are already feeling sad at the prospect of leaving this magical island.

The Gloup, Orkney
The Gloup

We haven’t managed to get onto any of the smaller islands like Hoy or Papa Westray, partly because there is just so much to do and see on Mainland and partly because of time constraints. Also the weather has done absolutely nothing to encourage us to board a small boat and head out across the sea! Perhaps another visit with more time is called for? The Brough of Deerness, another prehistoric settlement, was to be our target destination today but when we reached the beginning of the path it became pretty obvious that the clifftop route in such strong winds would just be too tricky. Instead we contented ourselves with a visit to The Gloup, a long sea cave where the roof has collapsed … if you would like to visit just click here.

Insurance claims

Close by is the Covenanter’s Memorial where, in 1679, more than 200 Scottish Covenanter prisoners were drowned when their ship ‘The Crown of London’ was dashed on the rocks as they were being transported to Jamaica to become slaves. All the crew escaped but the prisoners were battened down in the hold with no hope of escape. There was no compensation for escaped prisoners. Cruel, we know, but do you think the captain might have been a Tory?

Scone time meant we had to go back to Kirkwall and this time to the Judith Glue Café. It is directly opposite St Magnus Cathedral, founded in 1135 and known as ‘The Light in the North’ … truly magnificent! Interior of St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall,OrkneyJudith Glue comes from a very entrepreneurial family that has stuck together (sorry) to run lots of businesses around Orkney and further afield. This is actually quite a large shop selling everything – clothes, art, jewellery and antiques. It complements another shop she runs in Inverness. At the back of the shop you come to the café/restaurant area which is quite big in itself. They pride themselves on supporting the local community and 60% of everything they sell is from the island. And that includes the clothing, the jewellery and the food. Would we find Rhodda’s Cornish Cream here, no!

Old fashioned beliefs

We decide to have what they call a ‘Peedie Cream Tea’. In this part of the world you see the word ‘peedie’ everywhere and applied to all sorts of things. Transpires that it simply means ‘small’. OA scone at Judith Glue, Kirkwall, Orkneyur Peedie Cream Tea cost about £8 and for that we got two sandwiches of our choice as well as a scone of our choice together with jam and cream and tea or coffee. It was all perfectly delicious and would you believe it, another topscone! That makes a clean sweep of topscones for Orkney. Testament, we think, to their old fashioned believes in good friendly service and self reliance. The toilets here have interesting signs for the ‘ladies’ and ‘gents’. We think both look particularly attractive.Viking man and woman at Judith Glue, Kirkwall, OrkneyAlso a great advert for Old Orkney whisky.

Stromness whisky advertisment at Judith Glue, Kirkwall, OrkneyPat ended up with her bird list totaling a very healthy forty nine … excellent considering we didn’t see any of the usual culprits – blue tits, chaffinches, sparrows etc. Perhaps our biggest surprise was the number of swallows still flying around at this time of year. They have a much longer journey than us ahead of them!

Surprises

This really is a wonderful island. It has been full of surprises … not least of which was the following morning at 7am when we drove from Stromness to St Margaret’s Hope to catch our ferry. In a flat calm! C’est la vie!

KW15 1DH         tel: 01856 874225     Judith Glue Real Food Café

The Tufted Duck Tearoom

Sometimes we go to the Scottish Antique & Arts Centre, either at Doune or Abernyte. Within a mile or so of Abernyte is the Rait Antiques Centre which we had not visited in a long time. It’s all changed. It used to have a tiny café area at one end of the old cart shed. Now the Tufted Duck Tearoom seems to have taken over the entire place. There are still loads of antiques in this and the other studios but now you can sit anywhere and  the ambience is much more in keeping. It is no doubt down to the hard work and energy of Tim Hardie. He has run the café since 2009. It was a nice surprise to see how it had developed. How would the scones stack up? Tufted Duck 01

Hats off to Tim

Shock, horror! The people who were served before us had taken all but the last scone. We were fearful that the last specimen would also go before we had been served. No worries, Tim had reserved it specially for us. What a guy! The coffee was great and the scone was very good too. It wasn’t home baked but it was very light and somewhat cake-like in taste and texture. When we asked the somewhat frazzled Tim why he did not bake his own scones he just gave us a withering look and flew past at a hundred miles and hour. Tufted Duck 04Actually, even though he was extremely busy, he still manged to have a bit of friendly banter with everyone. Well done him.

 

Democratic deficits

Earlier in the day we had been in Perth and had had an interesting and lively encounter with a lovely lady who just happened to be a Tory. Now you might think that meeting a Tory in Perthshire is hardly something to write home about but this lady was especially lovely and especially lively. She, of course, declared that our Nicola was the devil incarnate. Everything to do with her and her party was indeed BAD. Just as the media would have you believe. Now you would think, when the media never publish or broadcast anything about the SNP unless it is ‘SNPbad‘, that this is hardly surprising. However it is surprising that this attitude can prevail, even amongst ‘died in the wool’ unionists. All the actual evidence points the other way. If they look at the facts, even hard nosed unionists should be prepared to admit that the SNP’s record in office is one of which they can be rightly proud.

While Scotland’s democratic deficit starts to resemble the Grand Canyon, unionists seem to find it quite acceptable that  Scotland has absolutely no say whatsoever in what happens to it. The UK is clearly no longer fit for purpose. Unionists, especially lovely lady ones, should be preparing for an amicable divorce rather than simply casting aspersions.

PH2 7RT       tel: 01821 670760      The Tufted Duck Tearoom TA