The home of Haggis

I am in Glasgow, Scotland tonight  (Monday) as I write this, but I wanted to draw your attention to the fact that Beatrix Potter raised Herdwick sheep? That is one bit of trivia I learned today was we took the tour bus through northern England and into Scotland.

Potter who was the writer of children’s books and created the character Peter Rabbit was born and raised in 

The Lake District of Northern England, owned some 15 farms in her lifetime (about 4000 acres) and loved Herdwick sheep.  I don’t know how they are as a sheep breed but one claim to fame they have is that they are born with a black fleece and gradually the fleece turns white over the years as the sheep mature… one fact of aging I can relate to. Potter left all her land to a conservation group known as the National Trust, with the condition that it be maintained as farm land and wildlife habitat and always be used to produce Herdwick sheep. And so it does.

It was raining today, this second day of our UK tour and the wind was blowing hard— up to 75 mph, all part of the remnants of a hurricane which swept up the east coast of North America a few days ago and now has traveled across the north Atlantic into northern England and Scotland.

So it was cool, windy and wet as we traveled north. A couple hour cruise on Windermere Lake had to be cancelled. We stopped for lunch in a small town called Grasmere, which along with being the main community in an area where Beatrix Potter lived, is also the birthplace of writer/poet William Wordsworth. We didn’t see him but fortunately there is a museum and gift shop in his honor in Grasmere.

Yesterday, on the first day of our tour we visited the birthplace of William Shakespeare – Stratford on Avon (pictured above). We toured the house he was born in, although I think the gift shop there was added sometime after his death. We also visited the ancient city of York where the Romans (71 AD) and Vikings  created a walled encampment for gift shops and tourists.

It has been a good couple days with tons of sights to see. On the day-long drive through the country side today we saw thousands of heads of sheep grazing on pastures of small farms all criss-crossed with networks of stone-wall fences built hundreds of years ago by professional “Wallers”. And these fences still appear to be doing their job quite effectively.

There were a few beef cattle — Simmental and Simmental/Charolais cross, Herefords and black whiteface cattle in the fields, but not many. And also quite a few dairy farms — most with plastic wrapped round bales of haylage and often enough I would see fields of standing corn, which I expect a bit later will be made into silage, as well.

As we crossed the border into Scotland, they even had a few head of   Highland cattle grazing in the field.

Tonight we are staying at the Crowne Plaza Hotel just off the downtown area of Glasgow, with the Clyde River just

 outside the front door. Tomorrow we are off to tour the Royal yatch Britannia and the evening plans are for a dinner at a working sheep farm near the city where, along with the promise of a great meal, we will learn how these producers survived both foot and mouth disease and BSE. These folks may know where I can find that wobbly old dairy cow that is used in all video footage during Mad Cow news broadcasts at home.

And I hope I can sleep tonight. They tell me there is haggis on the menu for breakfast tomorrow, and so far I am the only one in our group of four who is looking forward to that. But I have my kilt pressed and I am ready for Scotland.