Ceredigion Whisky beats Scotch to win prestigious award
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Cambrian News
19-07-2025
- Cambrian News
Ceredigion Whisky beats Scotch to win prestigious award
"My father, John Savage-Ontswedder commissioned the first certified organic whisky in the world back in 1992 so his hard work needs to also be recognised for this achievement. There was no such product on the market at the time- "Dà Mhìle" is actually Scots Gaelic for "two thousand", reflecting how the original product was commissioned to celebrate and toast the new Millenium.
The Guardian
26-04-2025
- The Guardian
The dos and don'ts of good petiquette: four cardinal rules for dog owners
Across the hours of the day and the seasons of the year, Naseby Park is the place we return to, my dog and I. Surrounded by red sandstone tenements in Glasgow's West End, and roughly the size of a football pitch, this is where we first walked our four-year-old labrador Brèagha (Scots Gaelic for beautiful and she is, uncommonly so, thanks for asking). All I know about the etiquette of dog walking has been gleaned from the humans and animals who have paced its perimeter with us, and these are cardinal rules I have learned … The sine qua non of the dog walkers' code. Nobody wants to discover an abandoned turd, typically on the underside of one's shoe. Poop leavers give the rest of us dog owners a bad name. I've had animated debates with fellow walkers about whether it is ever legitimate to leave a turd. In deep undergrowth on a country walk? Beneath a jaggy bush, when retrieving it will probably require reconstructive surgery? I'm zero tolerance about poop myself, to the extent that I will pick up an unknown dog's mess if I have a spare poo bag on me. Not everyone will greet your animal with blanket delight. 'You do project your love for your dog on to the general public and that is a mistake,' acknowledges Tim, owner of Brèagha's friend Georgie, a tiny border terrier. To me Brèagha's frantic bark is a declaration of pure joy, having recently evacuated her bowels and discovered a half-eaten kebab by the bins. To a stranger, however, it could be a threat to rip their face off. A responsible dog owner must become an expert interpreter of body language and a keen risk assessor – I can precisely calculate recall time divided by fabric contact as the dog scampers through a mucky puddle and towards that woman in the pristine camel coat. There is nothing gladder than two dogs spinning nose to tail in a virtuous circle of bum-sniffing. But among primmer owners, there can be an underlying anxiety that being relaxed about this means you're up for everyone sniffing everyone's bottoms, which of course is neither practical nor desirable. Maz, owner of heart-throb labrador Otis, and I agree, we've become more laissez-faire as we've gained experience – both of our own dogs and how other dogs and humans respond to them. 'Of course dogs will snap and snarl,' she says. 'It's how they communicate. The majority of difficulties we've encountered have been with owners, not dogs, who usually know how to handle themselves, and will give dogs who are aggressive or unfriendly a wide berth.' Whenever Otis makes an apologetic attempt to hump Brèagha, for example, he gets short shrift. Plenty of those I chat to are happy for a dog to be off the lead 'so long as they come back when called'. Indeed, my cat-partial friend Lorna expresses her preference for this over acres of extendable lead lurking in the grass. Given Brèagha's genetic predisposition to greed, she is usually back at my side like a bullet for a biscuit. Maz is more militant. She believes some dog owners project their own nerves about control on to their dogs and struggle to keep them on the lead rather than learning how to manage them off. Maz also notes a certain demographic of male who likes to tell a woman how to walk her dog. 'There's an assumption that women don't know how to control a bigger dog. Men are constantly telling me Otis would be easier to control without his knackers. Which I think says more about them. But one word and he is at my side.' Cry When the Baby Cries by Becky Barnicoat is published by Jonathan Cape at £25. To support the Guardian, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
The Guardian
10-10-2024
- The Guardian
Country diary: A true giving tree, graceful as a folktale queen
The early October forest is at the turning point, that enchanted time of year when everything is changing form and colour. It havers, slipping backwards and forwards across the threshold between dark and light, the underworld of woodsy rot and the sky-song of geese, the realms of substance and spirit. Last night, the stars were fiercely bright and this morning we woke to frost. It still clings to the shadowed hollows of the ground cover and the lacework of spider webs. Higher up, the trees are stirring softly, like a great mystery is coming. The cascading birch boughs are tinged with yellow, the upright aspens a spangling of gold, paper-thin coins trembling against the high blue. Among them, the rowan trees throw out their arms, still feathery green and bearing clusters of bright red berries. Graceful as a folk tale queen, rowan is the mystical tree of the Celtic world, believed to hold sway against the forces of darkness. Bane of the devil and his dominion, she brought protection by absorbing witches' curses and fairies' spells. Many people believed that to cut a rowan would release this evil back into the world and some foresters still refuse to fell one. But in other traditions, the wood was cut for spindles and walking sticks, or milk stirrers to prevent curdling, or even divining wands. People made equal-armed crosses from rowan twigs and sewed them into their clothes while, further back, druids reportedly used the bark to blacken their robes. The magic, it seemed, flowed both ways. Once planted as sentinels beside churches and houses, rowans can still be seen alone and wind-bent above the stones of ruined crofts. Tragically, they proved powerless against the lairds and their clearances. Also called Lady of the Mountains, Quicken, Tree of the Wizard and caorann in Scots Gaelic, she has given her simple name 'Rowan' to women and men alike. A true giving tree, she yields her berries to blackbirds, thrushes and waxwings, though for human taste, they must be bubbled in a cauldron with harvest apples and sugar. Best eaten with wild game, if you can charm the keeper. As I stand in the woods at the season's doorway, the low sun fires the red berries and I can feel the rowan warding off my autumnal gloom. Country diary is on Twitter/X at @gdncountrydiary Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian's Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at and get a 20% discount
