Flow gently sweet Coquet!!!

There has been a wee bit to much rain in Rothbury last night and today, so the Coquet is flowing anything but gently! Rabbie Burns' tune "Flow gently sweet Afton" is the music in my head though.

Roving Rothbury Reporter, At Last I have caught the Fox!

Friends have been raving about The Running Fox at Felton to me for such a long time now that I have been desperate to go there. Sunday 2nd Nov was the day that I eventually managed!

 It was a lovely bright Sunday morning, but a wee bit cold and windy though,when 4/5ths of our clan plus puppy dog were heading to the beach for a puppy paddle and hopefully some beach treasure finding. While driving through Felton my morning coffee taste buds danced with joy as I spotted The Running Fox and I remembered all the recommendations to go there, so go there we did!

Through the door we all piled, to be welcomed by a colourful counter of delicious looking cakes and tray bakes all enticing us from underneath their glass domes. The cafe was very busy so it was touch and go as to whether there was room for us or not, luckily there was a table upstairs that was ours as long as we vacated it for a Sunday lunch booking at 1pm. So half an hour was ours to enjoy The Running Fox and our coffee and cake stop.

Enjoy it we did! Two Americanos, tea and a steaming cup of hot chocolate were invited to our table along with caramel shortbread traybakes and a Raspberry polenta cake.It was soon all devoured in this beautiful little gem of a coffee shop. Four happy customers , who would recommend The Running Fox and are already looking forward to a return visit, hopefully for lunch next time!

Roving Rothbury Reporter, Day trip to Beijing!

Saturday had me closing the door early at Coccuveda, 4pm to be precise. I did have a very good reason it wasn't just a case of me wanting an afternoon nap. I was heading over the border to Beijing, or The Beijing Banquet just outside Edinburgh. http://www.beijingbanquet.com/

There was the rare opportunity for me and all my siblings (there are 5 of us) to get together, we don't get this chance very often as two of us live outside the land of our birth now, but we managed a brief rendezvous for a nice relaxing Chinese Banquet.

The food was absolutely delicious, it was served buffet style so filling your plate as often as you could manage with all the colourful aromatic dishes was actually very good value for money. The restaurant had a friendly atmospheric buzz to it, families with young children and groups who were having a celebration, it is definitely a restaurant which is a popular choice.

For my brothers, sister and I The Beijing Banquet is so far removed from our childhood memories as it is possible to be. We were brought up just a 2 minute walk round the corner from here and this establishment was the local pub " The Maulsford". The pub was a typical working mans pub, i.e a pie and a pint place with the odd bout of Friday night fisticuffs! Definitely a no frills needed pub with darts and dominoes the only entertainment required with a pint or a rum and pep!

To see the old pub transformed into a Chinese Restaurant with style and serving such quality fare seems almost miraculous. So if ever you are in the Edinburgh area and in need of some good food with a reasonably priced menu and Chinese is what you are looking for then head just a few miles south of Edinburgh to The Beijing Banquet. It is very very popular so I would recommend booking before hand, it also has the added bonus of having plenty of parking!

Rothbury, X Factor?

One thing I have heard a lot of recently from all the lovely visitors coming in to Coccuveda, is how wonderful Rothbury is, There is the usual question " is Rothbury a town or a village?" I say that we probably still think of Rothbury as "The Village"
What pleases the visitors the most is the fact that Rothbury as a fantastic array of good independent shops, shops like Coccuveda where they can buy quality locally made gifts, the bakeries are also well appreciated. Alderson's the hardware shop is a visitors favourite as is our lovely Rothbury Deli Tully's. A couple the other day, who I suggested have lunch there (Thursday, a Harleys closed day) enjoyed their lunch platter so much they came straight back to the shop to thank me for suggesting they go.
 So all in all people like Rothbury for its unique independents which make it different from any other towns/villages. So I suppose you could say that Rothbury has the "X Factor"

Inspired by Lordenshaw!

Lordenshaw in Northumberland National Park is one of those peaceful and scenic places that is oozing with history and has one of the largest collections of rock art in Northumberland.
As Lordenshaw is one of my favourite places that is nearly on my doorstep it is not surprising really that my pliers and wire were inspired by the cup and ring markings there, and they helped me make my latest earrings and pendant. I just added a few crystals and colourful gem stones and magically a wearable Lordenshaw set emerged!

Christmas preps on a Saturday

Saturdays are a day that I look forward to as I have nominated Saturday as Christmas preperation day. Preperation as in festive things for selling in the shop as opposed to for our own family Christmas, that doesn't happen until well in to December.
First off the festive fancy production line are some pretty bead and wire icicles, all with a jingle jangle bell at the bottom. Felt festive fancies are always a favourite of mine, felt is so lovely and forgiving to work with, little birds are first to be completed but hopefully reindeer, stockings, robins, westie dogs, bells and ginger bread men should follow soon (ish).

Beach makes way for a Woodland

The Coccuveda beach window has now made way for an Autumnal themed window .Seaglass, sea shells and summery seaside prints have gone with the memory of a lovely summer, in their place are some of the lovely handcrafted wooden pieces and squirrel cards as well as new Tweeters bird brooches and my felt squirrel Tuftys.

Rothbury has a glamorous visitor!

I am not much of a car lover really but my husband is, so his eyes lit up on Saturday when he spotted this glamorous vintage car in Rothbury.  I believe it is a Citreon Traction Avant which seemingly was the first mass produced car in the world. You have to admit it oozes style elegance and glamour, you can imagine that dressing up to be in this car would be compulsory.......hats, fur stoles and pearls certainly no jeans and trainers! Why it  was gracing Rothbury with it's presence I have no idea but it was nice to see a bit of class.

Where there is glamour, puppy dog likes to muscle in on the photo shoot!

Roving Rothbury Reporter Does Afternoon Tea

A lovely sunny Monday and a day off was surely a good excuse for Roving Rothbury Reporter to be out and about seeking out.... treats. Me and Jane a good friend of mine headed in the direction of Morpeth, where the choices of places to go for tea/coffee and cake are plentiful.
 I had wanted to go to  http://www.curiouslywicked.co.uk/page12.htm for some time now so after a brief ponder this is where we headed for. it certainly has an old fashioned grand feel as we climbed the stairs to "The Manor"  |I had hoped that there would have been a real buzz of busy-ness about it but there was more of an atmosphere of sedate elegance, it was a Monday I suppose and quite often establishments choose to close on a Monday as it can be a very quiet day so we were lucky that it was open.

We pondered the tempting menu for quite some time, it was 1 o'clock we were there so really lunch should have been our choice but we knew we wanted cake too so we decided to be naughty and opt for The Northumbrian Afternoon Tea so we had equal quantities of sweet and savoury. It arrived all decadently on a silver cake stand, sandwiches, cheese and fruit scones with ample butter jam and cream and the all important cakes. It was all very yummy and very very filling, a doggy bag would have been useful as we struggled to polish all the food off, we did each find a bag in our handbags and slipped in a scone each to take home.

My only grievance was that the teapot didn't hold enough tea for us to enjoy through out the food and as there was no extra pot of hot water we had to ask for another pot. We were politely told that any more tea would be extra to the price of the afternoon tea package for two, fair enough so we had another pot we never really gave a thought to how much that would cost...........the bill soon delivered that shock £5.25 for a pot of tea for two........ I did think that was a wee bit steep and sort of diminished the pleasure of our Curiously Wicked experience a bit!

Why does Natures beauty fill me with horror?

Rothbury today in the afternoon sunshine was looking particularly colourful wherever I looked. The green on the trees will before too much longer change into their rusty golden richness, equally colourful.

 Nature is a great provider of food for all the wild creatures as well as us humans.
Apples are a very tempting tasty very nutritious bite.

Rose hips however, may look bright and colourful and Rose hip syrup may be a rich source of vitamin c, given regularly to babies  born in the same era as me but boy do they give me a shiver down my spine just looking at them. Being brought up in a house with brothers, quite often as a child I found the contents of these innocent looking rose hips being emptied down my back...... some how while I am typing this I have the sudden urge to scratch my back!

Roving Rothbury Reporter Roots and Dandelion are good for you!

We had a cheeky visit to Alnmouth yesterday, cheeky because I should have been in my world of Coccuveda Creativity but the sun was shining and it is the last of the annual summer holidays so off we went for a spot of combing, coffee drinking and cake eating.

Unfortunately the beautiful sandy beach at Alnmouth was not too rich in the treasures that I like to collect, but Alnmouth itself had no shortage of options for coffee and cake. Dandelion is a few metres from the beach and has a lovely courtyard with outside seating, It was as bit fresh outside so the leather sofas in the conservatory were more tempting.

 We didn't stray from our usual Americanos, which were excellent, the only strange thing was the cups were saucerless which did seem odd especially when we needed one to put the sugar spoon on, but hey, the coffee was being enjoyed so what the heck!

Cakes we had were caramel shortbread slice which was nice and not too sickly and a generous portion of cake from "The Cakeroot Company" with apple and stem ginger,

 The price of round about £8 was a reasonable price to pay for what we enjoyed in the spacious comfortable surroundings that Dandelion offer. I would have no hesitation on going back again.

Roving Rothbury Reporter, A surprise in Bedlington

Now, over the many years I have lived in Northumberland I have very seldom had the occasion to go to Bedlington other than to visit the music shop for flute/oboe/clarinet hire for school girls.
 Yesterday however we headed out for a bit of shopping and as we are still in holiday mode the inevitable question was " where can we go for coffee?" I did want to go to Fairmoor Arts & Crafts coffee shop in Morpeth but unfortunately it is closed on a Monday. We just happened to have a copy of "The Appetite Magazine" (a favourite monthly read) in the car    http://www.appetitemag.co.uk/wp/  so with a quick flick through we found an advert for Swinney's in Bedlington and decided to point the car in their direction.

I don't think that I was particularly expecting anything special but The Appetite Magazine has always served us well and as this coffee shop had advertised in here I thought it was well worth a try. I was very glad that we had, after the first sip of Americano I knew we had chosen well, the coffee was so nice and smooth tasting I could have quite easily had another. Traybakes we chose were flapjack and a nanaimo bar, being a chocolate lover I was tempted by the dark gooey looking chocolaty delight. I reckon next time we might get a piece to share as I struggled with the fudgy richness, between both of us it disappeared though. The next surprise came when I went to pay....... only just over £6, so was fantastic value for money.

So if you have never read the Appetite magazine before I would recommend that you do because just like us you might find a surprising little gem of a place where you would least expect it!

Roving Rothbury Reporter Westward Ho!

Today's Roving Rothbury Report comes from us heading in a westerly direction to the Lake District. Of course it wouldn't be a straight journey there, as of course with being a lady with a few years behind me, the call of nature has to be taken into consideration as well as the highly important refreshment stop! We had intended to have coffee at the Forge Art studios in Allendale but en route we spotted The Garden Station at Langley, which reminded us of a recommendation, so there is where we stopped!

My quirkiness requirement was there abundance, the Americanos were fresh and satisfying, the traybakes were chocolaty and moreish. I was happy to have stopped there, the garden was beautiful and the people were puppy dog friendly and the icing on the cake was their  vintage china and local craft work for sale. I think anyone in the Langley area should call in here.

We continued on our westerly way but we did stop at Allendale to see the Forge Art studios but no refreshments this time.
Next stop was at the top of the world or Hartside pass and although we were enjoying beautiful warm sunshine the minute you stepped out of the car the wind had long hair flying all over the place.

From this brief stop it was full steam ahead to Keswick, where a Booths supermarket picnic was beckoning before I had to climb a hill!!!!

I am not the most active out doorsy type so I was not sure if climbing a hill in the lake district was within my capabilities, but I managed, some people might refer to the hill as just a little pimple in comparison to Skiddaw but I am chuffed with my achievement! I have never known such hot gorgeous weather in the lake district normally you have to make sure that waterproofs are close at hand.

View from top of the "pimple" I walked up

Roving Rothbury Reporter Over The Border!

Roving Rothbury Reporter has not been out and about much recently so there has not been anything interesting to report. It is holiday time now so there may be a few reports in quick succession or I hope so anyway.

Today we wandered over the border, to the land of my birth. Dunbar was our choice because it seems to tick a lot of boxes as far as things we like are concerned, Lovely coffee, a renowned beach for seaglass and a few arty crafty gallery type shops, the added bonus today was another day of warm beautiful sunshine!

First stop was at 1650 Coffee shop and coffee roasters, we were lucky enough to be able to park right outside so we were able to keep an eye on puppy dog. The coffee shop was lovely bright and clean with big leather sofas and an irrisistable coffee aroma. There were quirky colourful additions around including floral and gingham cushions, floral decorated menus, it was nice without being to twee! Two americanos a cherry flapjack and a chocolate tiffin were the order of the day, the cost was £7 which was a good price I thought for what we got. Delicious! Coffee, I could have quite easily downed another, I would have no hesitaion of going back there again!

The beach at Dunbar certainly came up trumps with our inevitable beach combing and it got puppy dogs seal of approval for swimming.

Although I strayed back over the border, time did not allow any further than Dunbar, as Dad's taxi was needed later in Newcastle so no chance this time to catch up with family , I will get up there soon though!

Seaside in Rothbury

We have a seaside theme in the window of Coccuveda this week, " Beauty from the Beach"
There is more than just the seaglass jewellery that I have made, although that is most prominent! Pretty stained glass mermaid, seahorse and small boats and a light house, all made by a very clever lady, Juline Batchelor. Juline also makes some fabulous fused glass pendants that are "best sellers" in Coccuveda.
Completing the seaside theme is the beautiful artwork of local artist Viv Dykes of Riverside Studio from Alnmouth. Viv captures our Northumberland coast sometimes with vibrant atmospheric skies and other times with a calm serenity that completely draws you in to almost feeling the sand between your toes http://www.theriversidestudio.co.uk/  We are very lucky here in Coccuveda to be able to offer our customers such individual and cleverly created things all made in Northumberland.

Abandoned Post and Family Fun!

Now I am used to working bank holidays so don't really think too much about it, after all I am more than happy to be spending time in my world of Coccuveda, I am quite content to be in my creative zone, even if there is beautiful sunshine outside. Today, however I felt an urge to abandon my post at 2.30pm, more than half a days work done (I am justifying it!)
With having three grown up working daughters, opportunities for us all being off work and free to partake in a family outing are few and far between, there was the opportunity today so as quality family time is important and precious Coccuveda had to take second place!

We all congregated at a pub(surprise surprise!) for an alfresco refreshing drink before heading for some award winning Ice cream at http://www.spurreli.com/  We sat on top of a hill while we all devoured it, there was a warm gentle breeze, enough of a breeze to make long hair get in the way of melting Ice Cream cones.
I had the Arabica Coffee ice cream, it was so nice!

The beach at Warkworth was our destination, one of the many beautiful Northumberland beaches. A spot of beach combing was the task. As I am using a lot of seaglass and beach finds in my mosaic pendants
http://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/TheSeaGlassShop?ref=l2-shopheader-name  I need to replenish my booty. So we all had a good  wander along the beach and filled a few bags of shells, glass and pottery.

It is thirsty work all that beach combing, so it was back to the pub for more refreshment!!!! A good day!

Apostrophes!

I have to admit I am one of those people who do like good grammar and spelling. I am not going to suggest though that everything I write is never without an error here and there.
Part of my work this week was making an owl picture with a bit of an embroidered message on it.

It took quite a bit of time designing, cutting, sewing etc, so when I had finished it i displayed it in the shop window as I normally do with new products. 

 At 5 o'clock, while locking up the shop I glanced over in the window direction, there it was, like a ruler over my knuckles (just like at school!) my picture with a severe lack of an apostrophe!! How could I have been so silly! I just couldn't stop cringing at it, not sure if everybody else would have been that bothered , but I had to make sure that my first job the next day(after kettle on) was to get that apostrophe embroidered!

A picture paints 1000 words!

Since we no longer have a networked TIC in Rothbury I have been combining Coccuveda with providing visitors with an informayion service. I have found that recently the visitors are asking questions as to the landslide on the road, why the road  is closed and when will it re-open as well as a few saying it is a long diversion. I hope I have always managed to answer the questions in a positive informative matter. I have now put a couple of pictures in the shop window so that folk can see the extent of the landslide for themselves.......... I have heard a few gasps of horror!

I apologise for this!!!!

Yes, I am aware that it is August and we have been enjoying one of the sunniest, warmest summers for a good few years. I am also aware that yuletide festivities are not in the forefront of the minds of very many people yet...........but when you handcraft things for sale that take a bit of time and effort you have to get started early!
Here is my first festive offering to get you all smiling or indeed gringing at the cheek of daring to mention Christmas so soon.

shopping bag to help carry your Christmas shopping, from Coccuveda I hope!

Stitched and embroidered by hand!

Roving Rothbury Reporter It's Restaurant Week!

It is Restaurant week in Newcastle so this country bumpkin and two girls decided that we should take advantage of this and head to the big city and get a taste of how the city slickers do lunch!
We are normally tea and cake customers rather than fine diners, but that is not to say that we don't like fine food it is just a fact of life that our purses don't stretch to it. What better excuse than restaurant week to go out and sample the best without breaking the bank!
Cafe 21 down at the Quayside was where we decided to go, with two courses for £15 we thought this would make a special treat for us!
Wow, I think I have just got a taste for this fine dining thing!
We decided that we would opt for a starter and a main course. The menu was very tempting but not an easy choice as everything sounded delicious. I ordered the Cheddar cheese souffle to start with then followed that with Fishcakes with buttered spinach and parsley cream.
When the cheese souffle arrived I thought" How on earth am I going to manage this then my main course" I needn't have worried because as soon as I took my first mouthful I realised it was so light and fluffy and oozing a lovely cheesy flavour, it was soon devoured and thoroughly enjoyed.
Then on to the main course,  the Fishcakes were golden crispy balls with a soft delicately flavoured centre served in a pool of the parsley cream which complimented the fish perfectly. Again that was enjoyed immensely.
The restaurant has modern elegant decor and had a relaxed atmosphere so we were able to take our time and just enjoy our "Restaurant Week" treat!
So if you have the chance there are many places offering good deals for Restaurant week, so it is well worth taking advantage of it.

Would you describe this as Quaint now?

I wonder how often, this once vital piece of community life, is actually now used. 

Most people these days have access to a mobile telephone and mostly there is good reception for a lot of networks. 

Looking at the condition of the telephone box it doesn't seem too be proudly maintained anymore, the windows look as if they have a dusty curtain that sends out a message of "come in if you dare". I would like to think that it was still in working order and could be put to use as it was originally intended, should it be needed.

I am sure, that if it the bright red icon, from days of less technology, were to suddenly disappear from our characterful village we would all be sorry. we would miss it's quaintness I reckon rather than it's usefulness!

A Jolly Floral Hostelry!

The Newcastle Hotel in Rothbury is looking very splendid at the moment, fully bedecked in it's summer floral regalia!

The Newcy as it is affectionately known, has a whole host of regulars both local and visitors.
I know of quite a few people who quite regularly head to Rothbury from Tyneside for a bit of the creative culture from some shopping and Lunch at "The Newcy"

Over my many years as a Rothbury resident I have frequented this Hostelry on various occasions, usually with work colleagues, sometimes for Christmas dos with turkey and crackers etc and other times just because we want/deserve a wee drink, we have also been known to soak the wee drink up with a few bowls of communal chips!

I would describe The Newcastle as a" proper" village pub with a welcoming friendly atmosphere with delicious honest pub food.