Day 4: Peebles, Scottish Borders

Thurs 18 Sept 2024

We decide on a much quieter day today with an afternoon drive to the small town of Peebles, on the river Tweed in the Scottish Borders area. We also want to get back reasonably early as Andrew and Doreen’s good friends John and Jenny are coming for dinner tonight.

It is another beautiful sunny day – to get 3 sunny days in a row has been unheard of this summer – it has been particularly wet and cold. And I’m told we have also had the warmest temperature! It is great to get a load of washing dried.

Peebles is a relatively short drive away and Andrew and Doreen come here for a lot of their shopping (we park near the shop where they bought most of their furniture for the house) and often come for a walk along the River Tweed. The riverside walk is just lovely with lots of grass and trees (we can also see the area where the Highland Games were held a few weeks before). We cross over the river and we get some nice views back across to the Peebles Old Town area. Further along we can see the Hydro Hotel – so named because it had a swimming pool! There are some very expensive houses as we walk back – some newer, in the Hydro Estate; and others dating back to the 1890s. We indulge in a cuppa at a café before heading back home.

Doreen insists that she doesn’t need help with the dinner (she has been terribly organised in advance) so I decide to find out more about Roslin’s third unusual claim to fame: the creation of Bovril. Bovril’s creator, John Lawson Johnston, was born in Roslin in 1839. He studied in Edinburgh and developed an interest in food science and preserving. His uncle was a butcher and John apprenticed with him, eventually taking over his butcher’s shop. He decided to use the beef trimmings to produce a concentrated meat glaze/beef stock with a long shelf-life. This sold so well that he opened a second shop and a factory. Later, after emigrating to Canada, he developed Johnston’s Fluid Beef (brand Bovril). This was somewhat different from conventional meat glaze in that “the gelatin, present in all meat glaze and making it solid at room temperature, was hydrolysed with alkali to make the mixture semi-liquid, and thereby easier to package, measure and use”.

At dinner that evening I meet Andrew and Doreen’s very good friends John and Jenny. They have all known each other since school days so conversation is very easy. The food is delicious too and the wine flows. All in all a very enjoyable evening.