Each year I try to find a new location to explore a woodland area and see the spread of snowdrops. Last year’s post (good photos) was focused on Lochend Woods in Dunbar. This year, on one of our walks around Spott, we walked down the path to The Doonery, past the houses and turned towards the road to the village. On our left, there is a wood – with no name on the ordnance survey map, so let us call it The Doonery Woods – and here, over the stone wall, you can see bunches of snowdrops – large and small – on either side of the wee burn that flows through the woods. I remind you each year of Alice Oswald’s uniquely beautiful poem The Snowdrop – read here by Andrew Motion, accompanied by some elegant and graceful photos, including a close-up one of raindrops on the flower. I make no apologies for once again quoting from Oswald’s poem “Yes, she’s no more than a drop of snow/ on a green stem…. But what a beauty, what a mighty power/ of patience kept intact is now in flower”. The photo below shows the lantern like snowdrop heads – like a drop of snow – bowed as if in reverence to nature. The white head also reminded me of the oppressed women in Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, with their heads bowed as in this Getty image. The shining white contrasts here with the light green bulb-like part holding the flower and the darker green stems. The remains of last autumn’s leaves, now faded and soon to disappear into mould, also enhance the dramatic whiteness of the flowers.
In order to see the inside of a snowdrop, you have to turn it over, which is not easy of you are taking a picture of it. This site refers to the “Morphology of Galanthus nivalis or Common snowdrop flower” and identifies the inner part of the flower as the inner perianth. These are new terms to me, so I found that morphology is “a branch of biology that deals with the form and structure of animals and plants” and perianth is “the outer part of a flower, consisting of the calyx (sepals) and corolla (petals)”. So my anthological (study of flowers) knowledge has been expanded. Beneath the shy, white, glistening head which you can see from above, lies this beautiful, scallop-shell like inside, with the main part yellow and light green. This is hidden from the world but obviously known to pollinators, which probably find it by smell rather the sight. A snowdrop head rewards an inquisitive mind with a glorious revelation.
In this wood, looking to the south (photo below) you can see the groups of galanthus nivalis on both sides of the burn, which was meandering downstream at a very leisurely pace on the day of my visit. The trees are bare and at this time of the year – snowdrops apart – it is not the most interesting wood that you might come across. It will, of course, have its days of greenery and sunshine. The stones beneath the stream are brown with silt but the water becomes white and then takes on a bluish tinge, as do the stones as you follow the burn down the photo to the mini breakwater. I have never seen anyone in this wood while walking past it, but it was a peaceful haven on that day, with only the sound of a robin in a far tree and, if you put your ear close to it, the trickling of the water in the burn. So I was glad that I had taken the time to go off the main track and into this galanthian idyll.
Out for lunch recently with my pal at The Last Drop pub in Edinburgh’s Grassmarket (good photos), we stopped in for a final pint at the Bow Bar, one of Edinburgh’s most iconic pubs, known for its range of real ales and its large whisky gantry. The photo below shows the sign outside the pub, with a drayman, his horse and beer barrels on the cart. A drayman was (and still is) the driver of a dray, which in former times was flat-bed wagon or cart, which was pulled by horses and used to transport all kinds of goods, but draymen were usually known for transporting barrels of beer to pubs. Today, draymen drive lorries or vans. The bar is in the intriguingly named West Bow where one of the city’s medieval gates would have been. The West Bow (good photos old and new) is a curved street which leads on to the Grassmarket, historically a centre of trade in Edinburgh but also the place where public hangings took place. The Last Drop does not refer to a final drink of ale but to the action which took place on the gallows.
The bar was busy with locals drinking beer and tourists trying out a whisky or two from the huge gantry. There is a fascinating range of mirrors and signs in the pub, dating back many years. While taking the photo below of the large mirror, with Younger’s India Pale Ale, which dates back to the 19th century, I inadvertently caught this lively conversation between two young men in the bar. This is a bar full of conversations, in a number of different languages. At the bottom left is an advert for pipe tobacco and nailrod is defined here as “hard-pressed and usually very dark tobacco made up in short rods or sticks”. Thomson and Porteous also produced Drifter Twist, Anvil X Roll, Best Border Thick Roll and Best Kelso Extra Thick which I am sure were appreciated by pipe smoking connoisseurs in their day, but none of which would have done their health any good. You might have thought that this old pub would have been wreathed in tobacco smoke in the late 19th century and up to the non-smoking ban BUT this site tells us that the Bow Bar has only existed since the 1990s. I prefer to think of it as an old bar.
The gantry of over 300 malt whiskies make this pub a go-to for expert whisky tasters as well as tourists wanting to sample Scotland’s national drink. The pub’s website above shows a photo of the gantry in an empty bar but the photo below shows a more authentic depiction of the bar, with its wide range of beers at the front, the imposing gantry behind and the customers at the bar. The pub offers old and new malt whiskies and a huge range of prices, depending on what you choose. For example, you can have a Linlithgow 1982 described as “A mouthwatering medium-bodied floral, heathery Linlithgow (aka St. Magdalene) distilled mere months before the distillery was forced to close” – only 1800 bottles produced – for £97 a dram (35ml) if you are feeling flush AND you know what you are drinking. For the non-connoisseur, an East Lothian produced Glenkinchie at £6 is an excellent drop. The Bow Bar tends to be a place where people pop in for one or two drinks – post or pre prandial – but it has a wonderful atmosphere, knowledgeable staff and superb beer. Put it on your list if you are ever in our capital city.
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