When I was a young boy, my mama said to me.....

...that the warmest place in Britain yesterday was London; the coldest was Eskdalemuir, Dumfriesshire. And it frequently was; in fact I was disappointed on the odd day that Eskdalemuir was not the coldest place in the country. Sometimes some other pretender like Aberdeen or Stranraer would claim the prize instead, but I wasn't having that, and I resolved that one day I would go there and find out the truth for myself, so today I fulfilled a lifelong dream. I have been to Eskdalemuir.

Of course you've got to get there first, which probably means going to Langholm; at least that's what our road atlas told us. We should have taken the A7. If you ever want to go to Langholm from the South, my advice is to take the A7 because the other roads that appear on your map are cunningly disguised to send you in the wrong direction. At one point I calculated that we were 4 miles away, only for a road sign to point back to where we had come from and give us the unwelcome message LANGHOLM 14.

Langholm is known as the Muckle Toon, which means it's a big town, a town to be reckoned with, a grand town, so why it's not better signposted I can't imagine. When you are about half a mile away there's a big sign that tells you Hawick is 24 miles away but nothing to advise you of the existence of the town just around the corner. And when you arrive, expecting to see WELCOME TO LANGHOLM, THE MUCKLE TOON or even just WELCOME TO LANGHOLM, instead you are greeted with the eccentric HERE COMES LANGHOLM, with a reminder that it is the birthplace of Hugh MacDiarmid, who was that rare thing in his day, a Communist poet who supported the cause of Scottish independence. MacDiarmid was kicked out of and subsequently reinstated by both the SNP and the CP, and stood as a Communist against Alec Douglas-Home in Kinross & West Perthshire in the 1964 UK General Election, gaining 127 votes.

Choose the high road out of town, which is a road of outstanding natural prettiness, and after half an hour or so you reach Eskdalemuir, which turns out to be a tiny settlement but by no means a disappointment after 60 years of anticipation. It wasn't all that cold, 6 degrees in fact, but it was satisfactorily wet and it has, as well as a Buddhist temple which we didn't see and an observatory we failed to observe, a welcoming café and shop which is a proper community hub. Petal had leek & potato soup there and I chose apple pie and custard, which was delicious. I'm not given to hyperbole so I'll say no more; other that we'll be back and I'll be having some more. It was actually billed as Pam's Apple Pie & Custard, and I think Pam herself is waving on one of the pictures below.

If Rabbie Burns never wrote a poem about Eskdale and the village of Eskdalemuir then he died too soon. It's where you go, whether you are a Buddhist or not, to escape all the hideousness of the 21st century at its worst. Visit, soon, and don't forget to tell Pam I sent you.

Yesterday was properly rainy. Clive arrived, gave us some leaflets about the plight of the mountain hares, ate two Aldi apple pies and a tattie scone and took me  to the Blue Bell. I chuntered and grizzled for a bit about some of the people still working for Derbyshire Welfare Rights Service and then we went off to see Annan Athletic against Cowdenbeath, where our inclusion in the crowd increased the official attendance to 374. None of the players who turned out for the game are on £300,000 a week; £30 is probably closer, which is, in my opinion, as it should be.

The Cowdenbeath fans in the stand were easily recognised not just by their blue and white scarves but also by their accents, as ruggedly Scots as the Annan folk are tuneful and gentle. "Buik um" was one of the pieces of advice given to the ref by the Cowden supporters but my favourite cry was "Away tae buggery!" You certainly know you are in Scotland when the Blue Brazil come to town.

Did you know that as many people live in Yorkshire as in Scotland? This is true, and when you consider that there is still a lot of moorland and forest in Yorkshire and that hardly anyone lives in those parts, it shows how much space there is on this side of the border. That two of us, plus 2 cats, have moved from Sheffield to Annan helps redress the balance just a little bit.

A bonus photograph for you now. Kettleholm Post Office wasn't open today because it's Sunday. Whether it will be open tomorrow we couldn't say, but we'd not be surprised if so.