History, Uncategorized

And the Academy Award goes to …*!

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I love finding old pictures of Sheiling, so I was really excited to find it had featured in a movie . I came across this site – Reelstreets which not only lists film locations, but has a clever now and then feature so that you  can view a still from the movie and then an up to date photo. The “now” picture of Sheiling was taken a little while ago too. The tree has been felled and the bushes cut back since it was taken, but the gate and posts are still in place.

The film is The Bridal Path a 1959 movie starring Bill Travers and with a cast including  George Cole, Gordon Jackson and Annette Crosbie. Other scenes were filmed at Ellenabeich, Oban and Castle Stalker. I haven’t seen the movie yet but it is still available, so will be joining the dvd library here.

* The Bridal Path rates a respectable 6.9 on IMDb but it didn’t win Best Picture for 1959. That honour went to a slightly better known and bigger budgeted film,  Ben Hur

Food, Uncategorized

Oatcakes

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I tried making an old Scottish staple today. Oatcakes. I didn’t have any family recipes, though I’m sure there must be some, so I used this one from BBC GoodFood. And as I was using up some ingredients,  I tweaked it slightly. My gluten free oats were coming to the end of their shelf life so in they went and then I thought it would be nice to make them entirely gluten free so used gluten free buckwheat flour. I used salted butter, again using up stocks, so didn’t add all the salt.

oaty dough

work in progress

The finished products suited my taste but I think in future I’ll add the recipe quantity.

This  recipe and all the others I found asked me to bake the cakes but I set aside some to cook stove top on the griddle , this is how they would have been cooked in the past. The stove top version worked but the oven baked ones were crisper.

baking tray

ready to bake

All in all I was pretty pleased with the result and they weren’t at all difficult. So now I have an addition to my repertoire and one I can offer to guests on a gluten free diet.

finished oatcakes

finished product

History, Tourism, Uncategorized

A gap in the clouds

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We’ve been lucky to escape the worst of the winter storms so far but Gertrude and Henry gave us a bit of a buffeting. So it was lovely when the sun peeked out yesterday afternoon and we were able to enjoy a walk more or less upright and without one layer of waterproofs.

sunbeam

oops! need to clean the windows 

 

We climbed up the hill behind the house looked down on the Sound bathed in sunshine.

sound

that’s Sheiling peeking out on on the left hand side

 

Although on our return we crunched through this…

hail on path

hailstones on the path

 

Today dawned brightly and as we needed to make a trip into the town we took Bramble to her favourite beach for a run and then walked over the hill (following the cycle path ) to Dunstaffnage Castle.

castle feb 16

inside Dunstaffnage Castle

I spotted some signs of Spring in the ditches,

frogspawn

it’s frogspawn

 

but Winter will be with us a while yet, there was sleet after lunch. Still it’s beautiful here , whatever the weather.

rainbow

if we didn’t have rain there wouldn’t be rainbows