Yesterday I drove up to Glenmavis, just outside of Airdrie (east of Glasgow), to the New Monkland Parish church. This is the church where great-great-grandparents Helen Hastie and Thomas Beveridge were married. A very kind church elder showed me a book of the church history, made copies of a few pages, and helped me to ascertain that in fact this is where the marriage took place.
The building sits high on a hill right at an intersection, made of stone and very plain on the outside, and surrounded right up to the church walls and door (as churches are here) with gravestones. This is a huge cemetery. Inside the church it is all dark wood and warm. I took a couple of photos. Click here for a photo of the interior. (You have to click on Today up top once you get to the home page. Then scroll down to below the photo of the elders.)
It was powerful to stand where our ancestors joined together to start a life together, just before they set sail for America to start another sort of new life.
I have spent 3 nights staying at a local farmhouse bed and breakfast with a lovely couple. Alec has beef cattle, and his wife Ann's uncles are dairy farmers. They are having the same kinds of problems that Vermont dairy farmers are having, not being paid enough for the milk. This month has been very wet and Alec is really worried because he cannot get a dry spell to make hay. The beef industry was really hurt by the mad cow disease scare 10 years ago. This even though that happened down in England on dairy farms, where they feed the cows meat etc. He feeds his cattle barley and other grains that he grows, but this does not make it into the news, and so people would not buy UK beef at all.
Yesterday afternoon I walked up into the fields and hills to the north of the farm, where a huge windmill collection stands. These things are enormous and though almost silent, there is a slight drone of the wind passing the blades. I counted over 35. I also climbed in the ruins of an old farm (all stone, of course).
There is much white clover here. The 3 most obviously common plants are white clover, thistles (3-4 varieties at least), and nettles. Nettles are everywhere. I see no honey bees on the clover, but plenty of bumblebees....
Today I am headed down to the southwest, back to the county of Dumfries and Galloway, to spend 3 nights in Castle Douglas (that's a town name, not a castle). I hope to explore Kirkudbright (pron. keer-koo-bree), an artist town, Threave gardens (extensive gardens), Ellisland Farm where Robert Burns lived for a few years, and Wigtown, which has many bookstores.
The building sits high on a hill right at an intersection, made of stone and very plain on the outside, and surrounded right up to the church walls and door (as churches are here) with gravestones. This is a huge cemetery. Inside the church it is all dark wood and warm. I took a couple of photos. Click here for a photo of the interior. (You have to click on Today up top once you get to the home page. Then scroll down to below the photo of the elders.)
It was powerful to stand where our ancestors joined together to start a life together, just before they set sail for America to start another sort of new life.
I have spent 3 nights staying at a local farmhouse bed and breakfast with a lovely couple. Alec has beef cattle, and his wife Ann's uncles are dairy farmers. They are having the same kinds of problems that Vermont dairy farmers are having, not being paid enough for the milk. This month has been very wet and Alec is really worried because he cannot get a dry spell to make hay. The beef industry was really hurt by the mad cow disease scare 10 years ago. This even though that happened down in England on dairy farms, where they feed the cows meat etc. He feeds his cattle barley and other grains that he grows, but this does not make it into the news, and so people would not buy UK beef at all.
Yesterday afternoon I walked up into the fields and hills to the north of the farm, where a huge windmill collection stands. These things are enormous and though almost silent, there is a slight drone of the wind passing the blades. I counted over 35. I also climbed in the ruins of an old farm (all stone, of course).
There is much white clover here. The 3 most obviously common plants are white clover, thistles (3-4 varieties at least), and nettles. Nettles are everywhere. I see no honey bees on the clover, but plenty of bumblebees....
Today I am headed down to the southwest, back to the county of Dumfries and Galloway, to spend 3 nights in Castle Douglas (that's a town name, not a castle). I hope to explore Kirkudbright (pron. keer-koo-bree), an artist town, Threave gardens (extensive gardens), Ellisland Farm where Robert Burns lived for a few years, and Wigtown, which has many bookstores.
Comments
Oh, and by the way, a British restaurant that I went to in NYC with James and Oliver had exactly the same attitude towards cream...the desserts were enormous, slathered with cream, and then there were pitchers of custard sauce to pour on top of it all...and the pitchers were LARGE. I felt ill by the time we left the place! My fault, of course---I ate too much!
It must have been lovely to come to a gentler, kinder place in the U.S. --- though that was probably equally hard. I think that Helen Hastie came up in the world by marrying Thomas Beveridge. He was able to give her a really better life than she would have had in Scotland.