rhythmaning | To celebrate my birthday this weekend (Reply)

To celebrate my birthday this weekend, we went to a small “restaurant with rooms”, the Cross in Kingussie. We have been there several times before; it is that kind of a place.

It was a foggy drive up from Edinburgh: cloud was low the whole way up, and from Bruar, it was lower than the road. The hills at Drumochter were completely obscured; I even had to slow right down – in the fog, it became uncertain which bits of the A9 were single or dual carriage way. There was no scenery; just cloud, and fog, although north of Dalwhinnie, occasional breaks illuminated the Caringorms for a few seconds before subsiding into the gloom.

We arrived in Kingussie in the middle of the afternoon, and settled into our room; coffee and cake were served (a good thing). The rooms are populate with a selection of magazines, so we lay on the bed reading Decanter, Vanity Fair, BBC Wildlife and Country Walking (and that was just me), and lazed in log, hot baths.

We went down to dinner, and strangely had elderflower pressé as an aperitiv; we ordered and I picked some wine – a couple of half bottles (Chateau Reynon and Jaboulet Crozes-Hermitage, if you are interested, and even if you’re not).

The food was excellent – some really delicious scallops (done in a lightly spicy crust) and then my wife had sea-bass with asparagus (which looked really good) and I had fillet steak (which was delicious). Then we had cheese – from Iain Mellis – followed by whisky (Dalwhinnie – the local malt) and coffee.

Wonderful.

We fell into a slumber listening to the late, most great Michel Pettruciani playing solo piano.

Breakfast was even better. Delicious fresh orange juice; fresh blueberries, raspberries and strawberries; home-made croissants; and wild-rice and home-smoked kedgeree. Scrumptious.

The best thing was talking to my wife: given the nature of birthdays (and the fact it was just over ten years since we started going out), there was a lot of reminiscing – remembering old holidays, places we’ve been to; and planning repeat trips. (Talking about our first visit to new York, my wife remarked that, as we walked through the city, every few minutes I would exclaim excitedly – “There’s the Chrysler Building!” Well, it is one of the most beautiful buildings in the world… And it looks great from every angle.)