...and we drove up, to the Highlands!

Report of our work-and-holiday trip!

We’re back, but we are still “recovering” from our holiday, so I don't have research or serious Violoncello da Spalla stuff for today’s newsletter. There’s quite a lot to tell about our holiday, though, and as we are at the 119th newsletter, I hope you won’t be annoyed by a short report from our time in England and Scotland.

I dare say it was (almost) the perfect holiday, perfectly balanced between work and leisure, between being by ourselves and making new connections. We travelled a bit too much (at least ten days were more than 6 hours driving) and never stayed enough. This is something we have to adjust when planning our trips. We enjoyed great food. As we live in the Alps, we don’t eat much fish, so we enjoyed not only the traditional hand-battered fish and chips but also many other haddock recipes. We don’t have haddock in Italy, and it’s a fish we love.

But I’m already going too fast! Let’s start with why we planned this trip: we enrolled in a set-up course with Andrew Fairfax and Kathrin Hügel, organised by the British Violin Making Association in the splendid context of Halsway Manor, a spectacular place in Somerset.

We were a nice group of people, well assorted between professionals and amateurs from all over the world, and we enjoyed morning walks on the moor on the top of the hill.

Halsway Manor dates from before 1069 (that’s the year of the first mention of it, but the actual place was made around 1500, and it is enriched by wooden panels and fireplaces of the same century). And the garden features enormous decorative artichokes!

We had the best tutors possible. Not only do they have huge experience and knowledge, but they also are very generous with it!

At the end of the course, the usual party: “everybody wants to play da spalla!”

Before arriving there, we stopped in Oxford for a short visit to the Ashmolean Museum. You never have enough of that collection!

After the course, we drove north to taste a bit of Scotland. We stopped for two days in the Ardnamurchan peninsula, the southern part of the highlands. A quiet place with tasty food and a breathtaking landscape: just what we were looking for!

The nicest part of it was that the people were very friendly and welcoming: no matter if you are asking for road directions or buying a book or simply ordering at the restaurant, their eyes are bright with enthusiasm. Not sure if it is hospitality, if they like meeting new people or if it is just how they are, but we found rare exceptions only between adolescents. We were sad on the day of our departure, my head already ruminating on when we could return.

Without planning for it, we were driving in Glenfinnan just in time to stop and take out our phones to film the Jakobite, the Harry Potter train!

We had six full days of driving back home, with a few stops to visit beautiful but highly touristic spots.

One night we were sleeping in the beautiful Ushaw house near Durham, when they had a fire. At the fire alarm, we went out in our pyjamas, thinking that someone probably had smoke in the room and we would be re-admitted in minutes. Big mistake! There was a huge fire that destroyed two chapels (up here, the picture up right), and we stayed more than one hour outside in the night, not properly dressed. So I got bronchitis and travelling with air conditioning became very annoying, though necessary because now continental Europe is very hot!

We had the extreme luck that almost every cathedral we entered in, an organist was practising. So we could listen to the organs of Carlisle Cathedral, St. Alban's and Canterbury.

The organist of Canterbury Cathedral moved us to tears.

Unfortunately, no one was playing the organ in Exeter cathedral, but a Dixieland band was on the river quay, and we had a wonderful time anyway!

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The good news is that while on the road, we could also meet Wenhan Jiang, the first viola of the Ulster Orchestra, and we delivered him Daniela’s latest Violoncello da Spalla.

We are proud that Wenhan chooses to play one of our instruments: not only he has experience of top quality instruments, having played on a Gasoaro da Saló viola, but he likes writing new arrangements for viola so he’s now eager to write for Violoncello da Spalla, five strings! His wife is a singer and he’s planning to set a duo with her. We are looking forward listening more from him and our Violoncello da Spalla!

Follow Wenhan on his Instagram, he has nice videos on it!

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I didn't draw cartoons while away, so I don't have a title cartoon for this week. But when travelling, I enjoy watercolours. As I do that once a year my results may be very poor, but they help me to remember colors and smells of the places we travel through.

Our souvenirs from UK: the big book of the Ashmolean collection, small books on birds, weeds and soil, gardener’s hand cream with hebridean weeds and a delicate whisky with two cool glasses. I also had a nice scarf, hand knitted with Scottish wool (not in the pic, sorry), and a little plant of blackcurrant from the community garden shop in Ardnamurchan.

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Featured video of the week

This time not Violoncello da Spalla related: our favourite recipe from the Scottish highlands. If you know a good source of smoked haddock shipping to Italy, please post the link in the comments!