1993 Biking Britain

Black pudding blues

One morning over breakfast at the Old Manse B&B, I came shockingly close to starting World War III. A fellow guest, a tough Scottish lady of 50, was eating black pudding. Some days earlier I had been served black pudding by a B&B host and found it not particularly appetising. I had discussed this fact with yet another host who had offered me a choice of black pudding or haggis for breakfast. He had said that the best black pudding was to be obtained, not in Scotland, but in England. It was only when I repeated his opinion at the Old Manse breakfast table, and had my head bitten off, that I realised my earlier host had been an Englishman! (The enmity between the English and the Scots is alive and well and thriving in Scotland. Perhaps with good reason – I was told that when the temperature drops to a certain level in England, old-age pensioners are give a sort of bad weather subsidy. The temperature in Scotland apparently has to fall to considerably below this level before the Scots qualify for the same subsidy. (Unconfirmed.))

I pacified my fellow guest by asking about her hobby – climbing the Munros. The 277 Munros, mountains in Scotland over 3,000 feet, were first identified in 1891 by a Mr Munro. It was 1901 before the first person conquered all the Munros and by 1960 only 30 people had done so. After that it became a national pastime and by 1991 when my fellow gust climbed her last Munro, she was number 927 – a significant number, she told me, because it can be divided by three to give 309, which can be divided by three to give 103, which is a prime number divisible only by itself.

Despite their weather, the Brits spend lots of time outdoors: climbing the Munros, walking the Pennine Way and the Coast to Coast, cycling “end t’ end”. The hills often unseen in the mist; the going treacherous.