My Creative Cup of Tea

June 20, 2023

#MCCOTPlacetoVisit {4}

ERRINGTON CHEESE

Walston Braehead Farm

Carnwath

Lanarkshire

Scotland

If you are planning to visit Scotland this summer and you are a cheese-lover, there is a place you absolutely have to visit. Its name is the Walston Braehead Farm. Located around 1000 ft above sea level, in the Southern Uplands of Scotland, in South Lanarkshire at the foot of the Pentland Hills, around 7 miles from Biggar, 25 miles south of Edinburgh and 30 miles from Glasgow, the latter is a small and environmentally sustainable (provided with a two 20KW wind turbines since 2012) 300-acre family-run farm, property of farmers and award-winning cheese makers Selina and her husband Andrew Cairns. Started on a small scale in 1983 by Humphrey Errington, who moved from Dumfriesshire to Lanarkshire and bought the farm and the land in 1981, the ERRINGTON CHEESE company is now a flourishing Scottish business. After studying Construction Management at Heriot Watt University and then working for Edinburgh Airport, Selina, who grew up on the farm, finally found her own true path and decided to follow in the footsteps of his father Humphrey and became a talented and passionate artisan cheese maker. If living in the countryside surrounded by Nature is a unique life experience, life on the farm surely requires a lot of daily organisation and hard work. As farmers and cheese makers, the Cairns are pretty busy all day long. While Andrew looks after the farm, which is run as extensively and naturally as possible, helped by her sister-in-law Angela, Selina daily takes care of the cheese making. With passion and dedication. "My Husband Andrew goes out to bring the sheep in and do the milking at 5am. I normally get the children ready for school and onto the school bus. Then the cheese making starts as soon as the milking is finished, normally around 7am. We both make sheep and goats milk cheese every day as I like to use the milk as fresh as possible to get the very best cheese; the cheese making takes most of the day between salting and the other jobs. Most of the wholesale customers collect at various points in the week and we have a. All the whey is fed to our pigs, which live in the woods beside the farm, we sell some of the meat in the shop too, although we have one pig called big Bob who refuses to leave when my husband Andrew tried to get him in the trailer, he bit his leg!" tells us Selina. Since December 2022, the farm has its own small shop, which opens from 11am. Anyone can also pop in to buy cheese and other locally produced bits and pieces or get a coffee and cheese plate. Lanark Blue, Corra Linn, Tinto, Biggar Blue are some of the delicious ERRINGTON cheeses handmade with love by Selina, Andrew and Angela. You could also can buy some at Ian Mellis or George Mewes in Edinburgh or Glasgow. At Neals Yard Dairy, Hamish Johnston, Paxton & Whitfield, La Fromagerie in London, The Courtyard Dairy in Yorkshire and in Cartmel in Cumbria.