Author: Lesley

Reader, baker, crafter, grower, crofter living on the Isle of Skye
Posted on

If it was’nae fer yer wellies..

… Where would ye be?

(in the immortal words of The Big Yin, Billy Connolly).

I’ve just stocked up with a new pair of wellies. Wellies are the things that everyone on the island wears just about constantly, so a spare pair isn’t a bad idea.

As I have wide calves (read fat legs) I find that normal wellies are too tight for comfort, or that I simply can’t get them on at all.

I can’t tell you the money that I’ve wasted in the past in the interests of keeping my feet dry only to find that the boots only come so far up my legs before turning into rubber tourniquets. I quite like my blood supply, thank you.

I’ve found a company that sells wide leg wellies with little adjusting buckles so that you can fiddle until you’re comfy.

They arrived this morning, well packaged and in a funky drawstring mud bag for transportation. I’m impressed!

Thank you Jileon.com. You’ve made this fat-legged crofters wifie very happy today 😀👍.

Posted on

Upcycling

Whilst sorting through the cupboards to pack we came across some Turkish kilim fabric covers that I had bought some time ago for very little money and had stashed away with the linens.

After I’d bought them, I’d discovered that they were all odd sizes, each one cut from an upcycled piece of old kilim. Because I had no cushion pads to fit them I’d clearly put them away to sort another day. But looking at them again today I thought they’d do very well for the static.

A number of them showed signs of mending, and all of them were old, vegetable dyed weavings. I’m very drawn to textiles, and especially to those with some age and history to them.

I didn’t want to buy more cushion pads. So I repurposed an old, single duvet that we were about to ditch and made three cushion pads from it to fit the covers.

I love their slightly faded, soft colours, imperfect patterns and visible mendings. You can feel the hands of the past on them and I can’t help wondering about their journey and who has repaired them in previous generations. It feels good to give both them and the old quilt a second life.

The rest of the linen cupboard has also been sorted and the old sheets and pillowcases that are way past their best will be used as decorating sheets or cut up as cleaning cloths and dusters this weekend, ready to be pressed into service in cleaning and painting the static in a few weeks time.

When did we give up repairing linens and buying new whenever we felt like it?

Posted on

Ancient Drovers Track

This is the ancient Drovers track that runs up the side of our croft, providing access to the common grazings on the hill behind us for the people of the village and their sheep.

It’s a path not much used these days except for occasional walkers, but once upon a time it was clearly well used judging by the width of it.

I love how the heather embankments enclose and protect it, creating a sunken lane in the landscape. The colours of purple, gold, russet and green in the low autumn sunlight are beautiful.

There is one lone tree (I will need to check what this is) bravely growing through the hedging, and standing proud despite the predominant winds with no company for shelter.

My eyes are usually drawn the other way, to the South, to our view of the Sound and the mountains beyond, but there is an equal if more understated beauty in the hills to the north of us.

Autumn in Skye is a truly stunning season.

Two weeks to go and the anticipation is almost painful.

All photos by kind permission of the wonderful Sara Louise Taylor @sara_louise_taylor on Instagram.

Posted on

Work boots and packing boxes

We ran out of bread yesterday afternoon, so husband offered to pop into the local Tescos to pick some up.

The last thing I was expecting was for him to come back with a bargain pair of steel-toe capped work boots for me.

He returned and presented me with them with a flourish worthy of a man clutching a large bunch of red roses. Who says romance is dead!

I guess this means that I am going to have to pull my weight on the build, then… 🤔

I secretly love them. I may never take them off.

These have been added to the rapidly growing pile of knee pads, work trousers and power tools that are filling every free space in the house at the moment. This is the reality of a household getting ready to move in just a few weeks time.

Bertie, our ancient but lovely spaniel, has been reduced to sleeping in odd corners wedged between the boxes wherever he can.

I can see that he is perplexed by the erosion of his space, with boxes forming cardboard labyrinths around the house.

Poor dog. At his age he deserves peace and quiet, and a degree of constancy, and all we give him is change..

Posted on

Planning for the internals

Now that the exterior of the house is mainly complete, the builders will be finishing on site and handing over to us to make a start on the interior.

We had originally planned for the builders to do everything, but cost estimates quickly became prohibitive once they’d been discussed and confirmed. The build costs rose over 30% above the architects calculation estimates, leaving us with no alternative but to complete the house ourselves. We’d allocated some contingency, but the magnitude of this was beyond what we could absorb.

We are moving up and into the static in a few weeks time so that we can work full time on the build. As two IT people rather than builders, this is going to be a challenge!

The first week will be busy connecting water and power to the caravan and hooking up the gas bottles for heat and cooking so that we’ve got the basics in place. We also need to build steps for easier access, replace some of the flooring, fit a new boiler and give it a quick lick of paint. This will be our home for the forseeable few months and we need it to be warm, dry and comfortable. Only then can we make a start on the house itself.

Then we start with the foil membrane on the inside of the walls for heat retention and moisture control. There is already protective waterproof membrane on the outer walls underneath the cladding, but to ensure that the house is as sealed as possible we need to wrap the inside of the walls too before plasterboarding.

After that, the underfloor heating, screed and MVHR ducting. There’s something that gives me infantile pleasure as part of the generation that grew up with Alien to have ducting in the house… 🙂.

It’s certainly going to be different to our current lives, and I’m just so damned grateful that husband is a practical man who doesn’t seem daunted by what seems to me to be a whole mountain of challenges…

Posted on

Of slow cooked stews and power tools


We’re now in the final few weeks of the London house as the October winds blow. We sit listening to the rain and wind blustering through the branches of the crab apple trees that flank the house, commenting ruefully to each other that this is an early trial for the Skye weather.

We’re making lists of what will be packed for storage and what will be needed in the caravan for the duration of the build.

I’m anticipating a cold, wet Highland winter in the caravan and days of hard physical work, something unfamiliar to our soft urban bodies. Not to mention my still recovering replacement bionic knees.

We’re going to ache and I’m sure that exhaustion will hit pretty quickly. Husband will bear the brunt of this as there are things that he can do that I simply can’t, so one of my small contributions will be keeping us fed. Food will be important for both fuelling tired muscles and keeping morale going.


I’m packing my slow cooker so that I can make soups and stews first thing in the morning to come into at the end of the day without too much effort. It’s comforting to come home to the warmth and smell of a lamb hotpot permeating the caravan when you’re tired, cold and wet. We should be able to raise a spoon and some chunks of bread if we have energy for nothing else!


The kitchen in the caravan is also pretty small so I’m trying to condense down what to pack to the most essential items only. Kettle, oven dishes, plates, cutlery, a few good knives etc. I suspect that our food will be basic until we are in the house, and eaten off laps, but that’s fine by us.


Forget the wild fantasies of feasting off venison and salmon in the Highlands – this is going to be lots of simple cooking designed to fill us up and keep us warm. Soups, porridge, stews and dumplings. Hearty fare, albeit with fresh local produce.

Whilst I’m looking at supplies, husband is restocking essential tools for the build. He got rid of a lot of tools when he moved from the North of England, thinking that they’d no longer be needed in London (and having no storage space for them).

Our living room here is gradually filling up with reciprocating saws, drill bits, power screwdrivers, steel capped boots and work trousers.

I hug myself in anticipation. Not long now until we pack up the car with our ancient spaniel and start the long, slow drive up to the island.

It’s all becoming very real… 👍☺️

Posted on

Autumn cladding progress


Pictures taken on a blustery, rainy autumn day last week on the island. The first frosts were a few nights ago, so autumn is definitely well underway.

The larch cladding is nearly complete now. There seem to be a few bits left around the rear dormer bathroom window that have yet to be finished, but the scaffolding is down and we’re hoping that these remaining areas won’t take long.


We’re also still waiting for the water to be connected.

What’s needed before we can get approval to connect is a small value, simple return valve, but it seems that obtaining one and getting a plumber to fit it is holding everything up. It’s frustrating at this stage with just weeks to go until we will be living on site. We can’t live for long without piped water to the caravan, and with no date in hand for this to be done it’s a worry on a very long list of things to think about. It will happen.


I can’t wait for the larch to weather. It looks strangely stark in the landscape at the moment in its raw colour, and I much prefer the muted grey tones of weathered wood.

We have neighbours in a nearby  village on the island who have also just built a larch clad home and who are a few months ahead of us in terms of build progress. Theirs is silvering already, so I’m hoping ours will soften too very soon.



Posted on

Darkest before the Dawn

The saying goes that the darkness is deepest just before the dawn.

As I sit here in our bedroom in the half light of morning listening to the birds on the nearby lake beating their wings against the water and the sounds of London slowly waking up, I understand that feeling.

We have this amazing dream that after two years of nurture, focus and hard work is now within inches of becoming reality. We are within just a few weeks of packing up our old house, getting in the car and driving with the dog to our new life on the island.We are weighed down with lists and arrangements, with disposing of things, and with decisions.

Although I have now finished work, husband still has three weeks to go and so doesn’t have the luxury of daily headspace to process things. I’m limited by what I can do to help. It’s a huge weight.

Covid 19 is on the rise again with the prospect of further lockdowns and travel restrictions which is adding another spoonful of stress and uncertainty to an already pretty potent mix.

I know that this will pass. I know that everything will get done, and that if it doesn’t get done the world won’t stop turning.I know this. We both know this.

We will find the space to hang on to the excitement of these new beginnings. Even when these feelings of excitement are heavily entwined with the decoupling from our old lives and all that this entails. Even when sleep is dominated with dreams of all the things we haven’t yet done. Even when our bedtime reading is all plumbing manuals and spreadsheets.

It’s important not to allow the “to-do” list to consume every waking moment and to reconnect with feelings of joy at what we are about to do.

Because of course it will all be worth it.New beginnings, a new way of life.The dawn is lightening the sky already.

We will be ready.

Posted on

Preparations for winter

We’re preparing the static for the end of October as best we can whilst still being several hundred miles away.


It’s on the croft and tonne bags of hardcore have been moved into place this week to provide it with a bit more anchor weight. Kind neighbours have strapped the hardcore bags to the static with high strength lorry straps for us.

We’ve been warned that there are often ninety mph winds that blow in the winter, and that the weight of the caravan alone won’t be enough for safety.

We hope that the combination of these tethered weights, an emplacement of strategically placed sandbags to funnel the prevailing south westerlies, and the protection afforded by the house will be enough to protect it from the worst of the winter gales.


We also need to level and secure the static more effectively, and for this we are going to use railway sleepers which we will have delivered to site over the next couple of weeks. We’ll use them to construct steps up to the caravan door as well so that our lovely but ancient spaniel (and equally ancient and rickety croft wifie) can make it in and out more easily 😊.


We’re also buying paint, brushes and supplies this week so that the first few days after arrival will see it cleaned and freshened up inside ready for occupation. Gas bottles and connections to water and electricity will also have to happen before we can move in.

It’s going to be a very busy October and November. 🙂
Posted on

Everything oatmeal

Many years ago, after my first trip to the now famous Three Chimneys Restaurant on Skye, which was run in those days by Shirley Spear, I bought the cookbook of the same name.

It was a beautiful thing. Full of generous recipes from the restaurant and home, scattered with anecdotes of local life on the island. It’s now sadly out of print, although I still have a treasured copy in my boxes ready to be resurrected once I have my cookbook shelves up and running in the new house.

Many of the recipes have become firm favourites when I can get the ingredients, such as Bracadale crab tart and Shirley’s legendary marmalade sponge pudding.

The one that is the simplest of them all, and in many ways the most satisfying, is Skirlie.

There are many derivations of Skirlie in Scotland as it’s an old, traditional food. Shirleys version is simply oatmeal fried with finely chopped onions, butter, seasoning and parsley or chopped chives. In this version it’s shaped into balls and roasted around a chicken like stuffing to add a savoury, crunchy, filling addition to your roast meat.

The first time I ate it I loved it. It was a revelation in its simplicity and its nutty, savoury taste.

I’ve also discovered an interesting blog site called Cailleachs Herbarium which gives the recipe for a fermented oatmeal called Sowans.

This is another ancient recipe, I suspect not produced or eaten very much these days.

With today’s interest in probiotic foods I’m surprised that this homegrown, traditional Scottish version hasn’t become more known. Sowans is similar in its use of live cultures to the yoghurt probiotic drinks that we buy that cost a small fortune.

Maybe with the popularity of oat milk and the known health benefits of probiotic, fermented foods this will come back into fashion?

With husband a lover of ayran, I’m definitely going to give this a try.