FOR 364 days of the year, Carrbridge Village Hall hosts wedding receptions, ceilidhs, music and art classes—all the things you’d expect from a community hub in the Highlands. However, for the past 27 years, one October day has seen the handsome building transformed into the venue for an event you won’t find anywhere else in the world.
‘The contestants plan their year around the date,’ reveals Charlie Miller, one of the organisers of the World Porridge Making Championships. ‘Hundreds of people come here every year just to watch it. Some of them get here early in the morning and put down camping chairs, and they’re here until 6 pm.’
Echoing Dalemain’s Marmalade Awards, the contest, which began in 1994 as a way of boosting the village’s profile in the winter months, has become a global phenomenon, with entrants from as far afield as Sweden, Canada and the US travelling to Scotland. They’re all hoping that the bowl of porridge they make on the day using only oatmeal (we’ll come back to that), salt and water will bag them the Golden Spurtle: a trophy fashioned after the time-honoured porridge-stirring implement. The only preparation allowed is pre-soaking of the oats (‘half an hour can make all the difference’), to level the playing field. ‘We’ve actually had competitors who’ve never made porridge before,’ admits Mr Miller. ‘It’s a dish anyone can make.’
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der August 26, 2020-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der August 26, 2020-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
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A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
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Forever a chorister
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Best of British
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Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
