Our first stop out of Toronto was Cobourg, a town and beach resort further east on Lake Ontario in , of all places, Northumberland County. Still a matter of some fascination for a European to see a lake so big it powers breakers like the proper seaside!

Not sure if Turkey trotting would ever catch on in our home county of Northumberland, but it certainly seems to be a popular entertainment hereabouts.

The old pleasure steamers are long gone although the marina was full of pleasure craft while the beach and adjacent playgrounds were buzzing with happy  family groups making the best of the Labour Day vacation weekend.

We stumbled upon a pocket park purpose built as a pitstop for migrant Monarch butterflies They are as big as a small bird big –  9-10 cms wingspan – and get their name for their main colour, after King William III of Great Britain,  the Dutch William of Orange. This handsome creature is notable for its mass migration from the northern US & Canada to Florida or Mexico. The larval stage feeds on a variety of milkweeds while the migrating adults – as we were excited to witness –  fill up on buddleia, goldenrod, chrysanthemums etc.

Later, having wandered down the main thoroughfare with its wide sidewalks spaced with shade giving trees and cheering swags of flowers on lamposts, we had lunch outdoors at a café. It stood opposite the Victorian town hall, and we’d earlier admired a local craftsman’s model of the grand building, fashioned from old rulers, displayed in a shop widow next to our café.

Everyone surprised and delighted when a male praying mantis alighted at each table in turn. Rather disconcertingly we observed Its green triangular  head turning right round. pity I couldn’t have used a ruler from next door but I reckon this chap was around 6-7 cms in length, with enlarged forelegs perfect for catching and gripping a wide variety of insect prey. The locals love them when they feast on mosquitos and blood sucking black flies that can plague the lakeland areas in Spring, we were told.

 Mantis are chiefly remembered though for the (larger and more sedentary) female’s habit of eating the male after mating. Introduced from Europe to the eastern seaboard in the 1890’s, in a rather misguided attempt at biological pest control, their population is now well established in North America.

Of all the historic properties visited as a tourist, as opposed to the ones worked in as an actor, Traquair remains a firm favourite. For centuries the home of the Stuart (now Maxwell-Stuart) family it exudes an authentic sense of history while still being accessible to the world. It draws  you in to its lively story as Scotland’s oldest inhabited house, with the colourful characters who inherited, extended and developed the place down the centuries.

The Stuart family, kinsmen to the Scottish monarchy have been resident at Traquair since 1461. The family rose to national prominence as their wealth and influence grew, as visits by twenty seven monarchs bear witness. The Catholic Mary Queen of Scots amongst them and her bedroom furnishings here are particularly striking. You see the oak cot her hosts had made to accommodate that tragic monarch’s infant son James, who would become king of both Scotland and England in 1603.

The family paid a protracted heavy price both as Catholic recusants after the reformation and for their later loyalty to the exiled Stuart cause after the revolution of 1688. How the family managed to hang on to remaining land and property given their fiscally challenged state and Jacobite sympathies was a wonder in itself. The most famous legend attached to the house is that of the elegant ‘Bear’ gates at the top of the long straight grassed over drive. Closed in 1745 after the departure of Bonnie Prince Charlie and his army, they are never to be reopened until a Stuart monarch is restored to the throne.

In the wake of one failed Jacobite rising Traquair was attacked and part looted by a mob of angry local protestants. The Priest’s room here on an upper floor has a secret passageway enabling the incumbent to flee to safety in the neighbouring woods. Liked the detail of the incumbent’s vestments, unique in being plain white and quickly convertible to bed covers when such an emergency disappearance arose.

The museum is worth the climb with guide rope up a steep winding stone staircase to the highest level of the original medieval former hunting lodge. The plaster walls with faded C16th frescoes of hunting scenes is the backdrop to well displayed family memorabilia and object d’art.

Curiosities range from Jacobite drinking glasses and miniature sets of C18th travel essentials to an intriguing set of ‘Napier’s Bones’ for calculating logarithms.

The organic nature of Traquair house adds greatly to the charm as you walk seamlessly from one century’s habitation to another, over different floors, through rooms adapted to time and place, marking the family fortunes. These rose and fell and would rise again through enterprising ways as the place opened up to the world in the modern era.

The title passes through both the female and male lines. In 1875  Lady Louisa Stuart died childless, aged 100, and the estate passed to the nearest relative who happened to be a Maxwell. The current, 21^st Laird, Lady Catherine and her husband Mark, run the house and its 100 acres of grounds today through a charitable trust. Their programme of events has one unusual festival –  Beyond Borders  –  coinciding with the final week of the mega festival up the road in Edinburgh. The marquees for which were being delivered as we arrived.

In the 1950’s Lady Catherine’s father Peter re-discovered the abandoned C18th brewery and gradually renewed the craft on a commercial basis, a forerunner of today’s micro-breweries, that’s now  a thriving business exporting nationally and internationally. Naturally we stopped in the shop to buy a sample or two.

 A pleasant café in the former gardeners cottage, part of the extensive walled garden, now largely grassed over, complete with a pond and mature orchard. Particularly loved the sculpture of a life size heavy horse made up entirely of agricultural machinery and ploughs, painted black. Entitled ‘Epona’, it was made in 1999 by Rachael Long. We didn’t visit on this occasion but there’s also a beech tree maze created in modern times, with paths leading through the woods to the children’s playground and river beyond.

In honour of the printers – past, present and to come…the multipliers of recorded thought, carrying down knowledge…the preservers of art, the promoters of culture. (Printers Association of Chicago, 1914)

Traquair House apart, Innerleithen in the Scottish Borders has an historic time capsule within its purlieu at R. Smail & Sons printing works on its high street, in the same premises it began business in 1866. Three generations of the family ran the firm up until 1986 when Cowan, the grandson of founder Robert, retired. By a stroke of great good fortune the whole premises, complete with all the original printing presses, equipment and archive came into the possession of the National Trust for Scotland (NTS) who moved to restore and reopen the business as a working museum. Staff and volunteers still print commercially for customers near and far using that original machinery, as well as operating daily tours and running courses out of season. This was our second visit, we enjoyed it so much when visiting for the first time years back with the grandchildren who live locally.

Our 90 minute guided tour, was led in turn by two experienced printers, Being engaged as apprentices, here to learn the trade, was a neat way of engaging our interest and involvement.

For most of its working life the premises were powered by a race off the burn that threads through this attractive Tweed valley settlement, formerly known as St Ronan’s Well. A mid Victorian boom town, water powered a host of mills in Innerleithen, and there was a lot of work out there for an enterprising printer. Between 1893 and 1916, when labour shortages due to wartime conscription ended circulation, Smail’s also produced the local newspaper. What a demanding job that must have been as a huge amount of rapid typesetting by hand was required to produce the weekly four page ‘St Ronan’s Standard and Effective Advertiser’ for up to 800 subscribers, while staff also doubled as reporters and salesmen.

Emigration to Canada, Australia, Africa and the U.S. was a common occurrence  in Scotland back in the day and Smail’s ran a booking agency for shipping lines up until WWI. The company office where we started the tour, illuminated by the acid etched shop front windows, has paperwork aplenty stacked in every nook and cranny. Keen fishermen, the Smail’s also stocked a range of flies for sale!

As we were to discover the family never threw anything away and their 52 hefty volumes of ‘Guard Books’ holds samples of every job produced between 1876 – 1956…advertising leaflets, posters, dance tickets, police reports, letterheads, concert notices, order forms, invoices, hymn sheets, menus, postcards and so on and so on. (After 1956 they kept job samples in files)

We were shown the original undershot water wheel in its casing as we entered the paper store. Quirky highlight here was the home engineered machine for dusting silver and gold leaf excess from finished print, utilising locally sourced fur and feathers from game.

Ascending the stairs we were inducted into the business that went on in the case room situated under sloping overhead windows, maximising the light. Here Robin, our guide, instructed us apprentices how to pick letters from the big wooden galley case. ‘Upper Case’ capital letters from the top, the rest from the ‘Lower Case’. We then compiled them, back to front, right way up, into our metal setting sticks, ready to hand over for individual framing and printing by our compositor in the great C19th Columbia eagle press.

Everyone – especially the children in our tour party – loved being handed back the souvenir bookmarks printed with our names. Task completed, we’d ‘made a good impression’. Other expressions born of the letterpress tradition started by Guttenberg in the 1450’s were explained here. Particularly liked to ‘Quoin a phrase’ which refers to the quoins, plain metal pieces of various thickness, that separate, frame and secure a phrase within the hand held stick. We saw the soft leather rounded stick or ‘dab’ used with practised skill to ink the set type thinly and evenly. Hence the reference to someone doing a job well as ‘a dab hand’.

The tour ended back down in the ground floor machine room. We were handed over to printer Colin who gave live demonstrations of the 19^th & 20^th century working printing presses still in their original positions. The oldest, biggest machine for the largest paper size runs was a cast iron Wharfedale Reliance roller press made by Fieldhouse, Elliott and Co in Otley. Watching and hearing it in motion printing a run of A3 posters, driven by belts that would originally been powered by water, was quite something.

Seeing the smaller but no less impressive pedal powered ‘clam-shell’ machine in action  proved fascinating too. Depending on the operative’s skill and concentration around 1,000 copies of small jobs – like bills, tickets or leaflets – could be printed every hour. Great hand eye co-ordination not to mention stamina required! Small wonder that a similar machine designed without guards, called The Cropper, caused many life altering accidents. Hence the expression ‘to come a cropper’.

Gift shops at heritage sites often fail to excite great interest but in this case our browsing produced a flush of sales, from a fabulous guide book with sample print pullout and wrap, to letterpress postcards, greetings cards, facsimile calendars and posters.

Smail’s has restricted opening days and tour numbers are limited so pre-booking essential. More at nts.org.uk

North to Newburgh on the Aberdeenshire coast for a sight of seals at their ‘haul out’. Grey seals mainly, alongside smaller groups of harbour, or common, seals. They’ve been gathering here at the mouth of the River Ythan in increasing numbers over recent decades. With some 3,000 animals resident at peak times in the winter, it’s believed to be the largest concentration in Scotland.

Impressed at how much work had been done to provide sustainable access to what has since become a tourist attraction. Workmen were extending wooden walkways and some of the lower dunes we passed had been planted up with bunches of marram grass to help stabilise and secure them.

On the opposite side of the windswept estuary is Forvie, a 2,400 acre national nature reserve, consisting of dunes and coastal heath. The southern section is closed to human visitors in the spring and summer to help protect the seals sanctuary. A secure spot too for eider duck to settle, as we spied them now, sitting in a line facing seawards, their dark foliage contrasting with flusters of foraging gulls behind. We delighted to stand watching the seals dive and return, heads bobbing in the wavelets, sometimes turning on their backs to scratch. This safe haven of an estuary allows for the seasonal moulting of adults and  their pups to thrive, putting on the weight they will need to survive winter. Some of the seals appeared to follow our progress as we strolled the strand, as curious about us humans and canine companions as we were about them.

A curious landmark on the other shore. The squat concrete bulk of a wartime pill box tipped over, submerging into the beach. Traces of  what I assumed was its twin on our side of the water left as a scatter of pitted grey blocks, worn smooth by the waves. Much further south a line of wind turbines traced a line between sea and sky. Further out into the North Sea was a drilling rig  while above  helicopters plying back and forth from Dyce airport, reminded us of Aberdeen’s importance as a centre of the oil and gas industry and the wealth generated by it.

It was wealth of a different kind that enabled the great garden at nearby  Pitmedden, our next port of call, to be built three centuries ago. The vision of Sir Alexander Seton, a wealthy Edinburgh advocate, later a judge and MP, and his wife Dame Margaret Lauder in the 1670’s, and built to the designs of eminent Scottish architect Sir William Bruce.

As a Royalist in exile at the Stuart court at Versailles Bruce would have been greatly influenced by Andre Lenôtre’s famous designs for the gardens there. Pitmedden today consists of four great parterres (meaning ‘on the ground’) with another garden on the higher level where Pitmedden house stands. The two levels are linked by grand granite steps with parapets linking elegant stone gazebos at the corners. These square turrets allowed family and guests to congregate for conversation and musical entertainment while looking  over the formal gardens spread out below.

These architectural features, along with ancient yews in the further corners, are all that remains of the original garden structure completed in the 1670’s, while the horticultural gem we explored today is a bold modern recreation. When the National Trust for Scotland was gifted the estate in 1952 by its last owner, Major James Keith, it set about the huge task of recreating a formal 17^th Century garden from scratch. The original plans for Pitmedden were lost in a house fire so drawings of the old Palace of Holyrood gardens in Edinburgh became the inspiration for the ambitious long term project.

Parterres and knot gardens developed over time to include different types of planting – like including annuals, different types of gravel or using herbs – and the different designs in the modern garden reflect that, alongside incorporating fountains and statuary.

Another contemporary feature is the continuation of installing sculptural forms. Stone pieces from the sculptor James Maine appear at key points around the gardens.

To maintain year long interest and take advantage of the sheltered setting, wide herbaceous borders were incorporated into the new design and most of these robust plants, artfully planted and well maintained, were in glorious full flower on our visit, swarming with bees, hoverflies and other insects.

Impressed by the upper south facing terrace where the stone wall was hardly visible, so thick and dense were the foliage and fruit of the espalier apple trees that have been growing  and spreading their boughs there for well over a century. In Major Keith’s day the garden as a whole was producing fruits and vegetables on a commercial scale for the local area’s markets.

The two parterres on the upper level – created in a much more free flowing form – date from the 1990’s and have since been modified in their planting regime with climate change in mind. In 2014 a one acre paddock adjacent to the walled garden was planted as an orchard and soft fruit garden with scores of traditional varieties. I liked the way some apples here are grown as fences, and that bee keepers and their hives are integral to the development.

There is also a museum of farming life in the barns, yards and outbuildings. This extensive collection of implements and machinery give one an idea of how labour intensive and demanding a business agriculture hereabouts was back  in the day. I particularly liked the recreated farm labourer’s family home in the cottage and the densely planted herb garden, full of fragrant aromas, situated beyond it.

Drum and Crathes castles are neighbouring estates on the north bank of the Dee between Banchory and Aberdeen. Both remarkable for the long unbroken history of occupation by their respective families. The Burnetts at Crathes, the Irvines at Drum. Both owe their early fortunes to Robert the Bruce, as each family had their fiefdoms in a vast hunting forest granted by that monarch. Their respective fortunes rose and fell in the turbulent centuries that followed, producing characters aplenty, amongst them rebels, gamblers and adventurers, fighters for crown and country, cultural benefactors and patrons. In one way or another playing their parts in regional and national events. In the late 20^th Century both families called time on their ancestral piles and, along with hundreds of acres of estate acres, handed them over to the care  and management of the National Trust for Scotland.

At 70’ high with walls up to 12’ thick Drum Castle’s central tower  is one of the oldest in Scotland, an awesome construction dating from the 13^th Century, which dominates the fine Jacobean mansion house and Victorian extension. The former common hall of the tower now a library with over 3,000 books, with many rare early editions, reflecting the family’s literary and cultural interests. The rooms throughout speak of a comfortable, comforting existence in more recent times, with elegant furniture and many beautifully crafted fittings.

Drum’s large walled garden is divorced from the castle at the edge of venerable woodland and rich pasture. A public appeal raised funds in the early 1990’s to turn it from its original function of kitchen garden into four garden rooms, divided by evergreen hedges, reflecting four centuries of rose growing and display.

One part of the garden surprises and delights with a human sundial where by standing on the edge of the current month marked the sun’s shadow will fall on the hour in the surrounding circle. Had the place to ourselves at afternoon’s end and its simple uncomplicated tranquillity conferred a sense of wellbeing.

I was surprised and willingly seduced by the presentation of Crathes, the showiest of the two castles. Garden and adjacent building combine to enchant visitors with contrasting colour, structure and texture. A series of way marked trails explores the woodlands and wider estate beyond.

The prize  topiary put me in mind of Levens Hall in Westmoreland and dates just a little later, around 1702. Despite the use of modern machinery – which we were lucky enough to see in action – the whole trimming process can take up to nine weeks to complete. There are eight individual gardens on two levels (including Victorian greenhouses) within its 3.75 acres of walled garden, divided by borders and hedges and graced by specimen trees.

A doocot (dovecot)  with steps and decorative stonework is an eye catching feature of one corner. The rose garden its most contemporary feature, where we lingered on benches to soak in the atmosphere by a bubbling fountain carved out of local hard black stone.

Crathes castle is a classic tower house that dates from the 16^th/17^th century. I loved the original stout wood door and iron gate behind it so typical of this sort of construction in uncertain and violent times. There were domestic comforts too by contrast. Only the Laird, his lady and VIP guests could expect a room of their own and a bed to lie on, so looking up from below at brightly decorated figures and lettered rafters on the ceiling was intended to entertain and distract by the light of candles and lamps.

Nearly all Crathes furnishings and contents were left to the trust by the 15^th laird along with the house and estate in 1952, which adds authentic resonance to its domestic setting. Only the first floor is accessed by the addition of a wooden staircase in Victorian days, which means one must ascend the rest by the set of original granite steps spiralling upwards, linking one small room after another, floor after floor, until the wooden framed long gallery at the top is reached, which yields an overview of the gardens and wider estate.

Another set of spiral stairs then leads one down through more levels, bedrooms and private chambers. Dizzyingly wonderful stuff, especially when combined with ceiling art gazing.

Enjoyed good conversations with the warm and welcoming staff at both these properties. Find out more about Drum and Crathes and the stories of the individuals who lived there at www.nts.org.uk

From the Dee to Dunnottar Castle. Billed as one of Scotland’s major tourist attractions, we joined hundreds of other visitors – most of them from European countries – to take in the stunning view of the great ruined fortress sitting some 160’ above the north sea on a spur of land made up of boulders cemented in igneous rock millions of years old. Once an early Christian chapel it had previously been a fortress – Dun being  Pictish for ‘place of strength’.

Dunnottar’s deliberate pinch point of an entrance, half way up the great rock, is  little wider than a domestic doorway with narrow cobbled passage way and yet more stairs, opening out  at last onto a grassed plateau with an impressive  range of grey sandstone buildings, most of them now open to the elements; chapel, stables, smithy, great hall, bedrooms, barracks, great keep etc, many set over cellars, and vaults. Rocks and swirling waves are glimpsed below  the sheer cliffs . How did the builders of this bastion ever manage to get so much material and supplies from mainland behind to headland in front?

For centuries Dunnottar was the principal stronghold of Scotland’s Earl Marischal, one of the great officers of state, inherited through many generations by the aristocratic Keith dynasty. In that time it hosted Mary Queen of Scots and Charles II and saw attacks and sieges in both the War of Independence and Civil War. The 10^th Earl’s active support of the 1715 Jacobite rebellion lost the family their lands and titles and Dunnottar was subsequently stripped of all fittings and re-usable building material.

Purchase of the castle by Lord and Lady Cowdray two centuries later saw it stabilised, repaired and re-opened to the public. Their descendants still own and manage the site. Even with lots of us visitors milling about and some testing climbs the castle ticks the necessary boxes of romantic ruin, superb viewpoint, historical atmosphere, preserved range of habitations, royal associations, fighting and conflict, immersion in the elements. …What more can one ask for?

We walked the high cliff path the 1.5 miles to Stonehaven. The town’s interlinking harbours spread out before us before the steep path descent to test your leg muscles. Our destination, appetites sharpened and senses primed, was the area’s most recommended and multi-awarded eateries, there on the beach promenade – The Bay. We sat outside to eat our haddock and chips after queuing for more than half an hour. It was well worth the wait. As the line shuffled forward we learnt the fish was fresh caught with the local boat named alongside the variety and farm in Norfolk the potatoes came from. One veggie offer the display board listed was chick pea fritters and n’are a deep fried Mars Bar anywhere!

On the return leg we stopped in admiration of a series of art works aside the beach boardwalk fashioned by an anonymous ex-seafarer dubbed ‘Stonehaven’s Banksy’. His humorous skilfully fashioned boat sculptures made of scrap metal first appeared anonymously about the place in 2006. In 2019 he told the local paper that “I’m nae an artist, I’m just a guy that bashes metal together” and that “The sea to me means freedom”. We’ll drink to that!