They may not be big enough to crawl through, but what the MVHR ducts lack in girth they make up for in number…
It looks a bit like spaghetti-geddon at the moment, with the ducts going everywhere. These loose ends will be fed into a manifold over the appliance wall in the kitchen, hence the waving around in mid air look. Husband has assured me he has it all under control and I have, to be fair, seen much labelling and even checklist tables.
You can see from this photo how useful the posi joists are in accommodating pipes, ducts and wiring. The gaps between the steel sections are big enough to be woven between.
The plasterboards are also going up. It’s strange how much they change the dimensions you perceive in each room.
All in all, it’s feeling like a good start to the year. The rain and sleet showers come and go but watching them from the big windows at the front of the house whilst work continues within is always inspiring.
The festive break is now truly over, the shortbread is finished and the cards are all taken down . I’ve left some twinkly lights up over one of the caravan windows because I feel that these dark days still need a bit of twinkle. It’s very cold here now, with icy days and occasional snow flurries over the hills.
Icy morning from the caravan
For the last few days husband has been sorting things out in the house in preparation for the plasterer.
Much iciness
The plasterer was supposed to start yesterday with the strapping, the wooden batons that are tied to the stud walls to support the plasterboard, but he is ill and rightly being cautious is delaying until he is recovered. Covid days, eh. One of our many new challenges.
Battens
The house is filled to the rafters with bales of rockwool insulation and pallets of plasterboard and insulation board ready to be fitted. When you see it piled up like this it looks as if there is far too much to ever fit onto the walls.
Filled to the rafters
I can’t wait for this next stage. Husband is ducting and wiring away in readiness for the MVHR and with him and the plasterers in the house at the same time it will feel like we’re about to take a leap forward in visible progress.
Building material waiting to be let in
Internal walls! It doesn’t take much to make me happy. Here’s to lots of progress in 2022.
The winter solstice is nearly upon us. Somehow, this far north, in the long stretch of dark days, this date takes on a special significance.
From the 21st December onwards the days slowly start to get longer. There’s no appreciable difference in the amount of daylight in January, I always think – but by February it’s definitely slightly lighter. It’s good to feel that psychologically at least we’ve turned the corner and that spring is on its way. Much as I love winter.
Skye is definitely a winter island with its snowy peaks and wild winter weather. The year here has taught us to invest well in thermals, warm throws and plenty of blankets! I’ve recently found Vinted, a vintage second hand site that has proved fabulous for spare fleeces and wraps at very little cost. I seem to be building a wee nest of wool in the caravan on these cold days. 😊
I’m watching the clouds scud across the sky in the aftermath of extreme winds last night. It reached around 80mph around midnight, and we got very little sleep in the caravan whilst we were buffeted around like a small boat on an angry sea. Luckily the straps all held and apart from being slightly tired and grumpy we have escaped unscathed.
Breakfast this morning was a bleary-eyed affair with a second mug of hot coffee needed before being alert enough to get moving. We will need a quick spot check for damage.
I have a few more presents to wrap, the Christmas chocolate orangettes to make (the test batch were all distributed, eaten and declared good enough for gifts) and then we are about all set for the festive week. The preliminary air tightness test on the house is happening on Wednesday this week, so another milestone is imminent, and we will be very interested to see how it scores. Husband will then crack on with the wiring.
Stay warm and safe, everyone. Don’t stress in the run up to a Christmas. It will all get done, and if it doesn’t, poo, who cares.
When we moved to our cold, wet island, 57 degrees north of everything, we maybe had a lingering doubt about the things that we’d miss. Lots of positives and upsides, of course, but there would be some things we’d have to compromise on, we knew.
The biggest worry of these was fruit. We love our fruit, and the thought of going without fresh fruit for any period of time was a bit of a concern. Surely living on the chilly, northernmost and westernmost rim of Europe would mean that figs, quince, loquats and ripe peaches would become things of fond memory?
Today I picked up a crate of fragrant Spanish quinces from the local store, who had ordered them in especially for us. From our local community store. How amazing is that.
Fresh quinces
That will sort us from a quince perspective for a while. Husband will eat them, hard and raw (he is bizarre) whereas I will poach them in a sugar syrup with cinnamon sticks and juniper berries, then roast them in frangipane tarts and sweet pastries.
Quince frangipan tart
The rest of the fruit we source from local organic crofts, or the local Co-op supermarket.
We try to keep it local but apart from apples, pears, rhubarb, local quince and berry fruit I haven’t managed to find local croft sources for anything else, and certainly not the exotics as an occasional treat. Supermarket fruit is often under ripe and tasteless, let alone the concerns that I have about the food miles involved, so anything that we can do to reduce our reliance on them as a source of produce is a good thing in our opinion.
This is where the polytunnel will come in. We plan to grow nectarines, peaches, quinces and maybe loquats in the tunnel. If we can. Unlikely as it seems, the shelter that the tunnel will provide along with the long summer days this far north will be enough, with a bit of skill and patience, to produce these things. We’ve seen peaches grown in polycrubs in Shetland, which is even further north and even more exposed than us, so I have every hope!
These combined with the berry beds as well as the apple and pear orchard that we have planned, and we should be covered for most of our future fruit needs.
Polycrub with space for trees
Bananas sadly remain a step too far for these northern shores.
I am sitting here in the caravan with my tea watching the rain come down in sheets over the Sound. I love the rain. Seriously.
We have been invited for drinks and supper to a neighbours house. We are taking Cranachan as our contribution, a deceptively innocent sounding blend of raspberries, toasted oatmeal, honey, whisky and cream.
Cranachan – Scottish trifle
It’s one of my favourite Scottish desserts and should just about make it intact in a wrapped bowl as we totter down the long and winding track off the croft and over to their cottage, wrapped up against the squalls and rain.
We are so lucky with our neighbours. We seem to have found a warm and friendly community here. They pop in with gifts of quinces, strawberry plants or spare fleeces for our vegetable beds. I mean, could you ask for more?
The weather has been wild for the past week. Torrential rain and high winds, gusting to around 50 miles per hour. The caravan rocks and sings as the wind vibrates through the webbing straps holding us down.
Yesterday’s snow on Beinn Sgritheall
We had our first snow on the tops last night. Early, but not unexpected. It’s been very cold.
Time to coorie in with pies, hearty soups, stews and big jumpers.
Husband was in dire need of a day off the house build, and I was starting to go a bit stir-crazy in the caravan after two days of being locked in to avoid the midges and clegs that had been swarming.
On Sunday we awoke to a sunny day so packed ourselves into the car with a waterbottle and a box of cakes from the children’s cake stall for refugees in the village (well done again, girls) and set off on our grand adventure.
Being a bit of a prehistory enthusiast I’d been reading about brochs for years but had never actually been to one, as they only occur in Scotland and the islands.
We decided that we’d drive to Glenelg to see the two brochs there whilst the weather was good and the daylight hours were still long.
Brochs are truly amazing structures. Built about 2000 years ago – give or take a bit as nobody is sure – these iron age constructions are huge, stone built conical towers.
They have double-skin walls housing integral stone staircases and there is some evidence of a central hearth and one or maybe two levels. No one is quite sure if or how often they were lived in. Looking at the effort involved in the construction it’s clear that they were prestigous, fortified buildings, maybe used as a defense against raids.
Dun Trodden (I kid you not, is that not a simply fabulous name) is one of the tallest and best preserved remaining brochs in Scotland and is located near Glenelg in a tranquil, green valley next to a shallow stream which trickles slowly down to the shore.
Directly across the lane from it we found a turf-roofed microbrewery nestled into the valley, and a taproom where a handful of fellow visitors were basking in the sun sipping their craft beers.
The taproom was called the Dun Inn (it’s getting better, isn’t it). 😊
What an idyllic setting. We must come back for another look once the summer is over, and maybe an explore of the second Broch. Maybe even a lunch at the famous Glenelg Inn just a few miles away.
An impromptu meal at the Indian restaurant once we’d crossed the bridge back over to the island topped off the days adventures nicely. Happily full of spicy food and naan bread, we got back to the caravan just as the sun was setting.
We’ve had a warm, breezy day on the croft today. Twenty-two degrees and a clear blue sky. It made our outdoor tasks today so much easier with the wind keeping the midges at bay.
Grass in the breeze
The grass has grown so much over the last few months that the paths that husband had scythed in the spring had nearly disappeared.
This was making trips to the raised beds and the compost heap a daily waist-high challenge.
I wouldn’t normally worry about wading through long grass, but I’m super cautious about picking up ticks and horsefly bites at the moment, and didn’t want to have to start walking about swathed in protective netting like some sort of veiled ninja..
So husband spent a few hours yesterday and today scything swathes through the grass and collecting it up for compost. The breeze helped what was a long, sticky endeavour.
Pathway emerging
Some folk like to cut their grass neatly and very regularly. We have chosen to leave ours wild, and to see what comes up. We prefer it that way, and nature seems to agree.
We’ve found orchids, clover and wild flowers in abundance, and there are certainly plenty of moths, bees, butterflies and insects. Husband has even had to rescue a few small frogs from the path of his scythe…we want to encourage them as much as we can. Natural slug protection!
Once we have an agricultural shed to store equipment in we will need to look at other ways to manage this, though. Even with trees, six acres is too much to manage by hand with a scythe. It’s a fine line between managed meadow and bracken and bramble patches overtaking the land.
We’re thinking at least one annual cut after the summer is over to help seed and keep the rushes down.
For now we’ll enjoy the grasses and the wild flowers from our small, scythed tunnels through the abundance.
Sea Haar, or ‘sea fret’ as it is also known in the North East of Britain, is used to describe a cold fog that accumulates at sea rather than on land.
Over the last week we’ve had some spectacular examples over the Sound, with layers of cloud, or fog, lying low over the water like a blanket of snow.
It’s usually burned off with the rising air temperatures by about lunchtime, but it has created some amazing looking scenes that we’ve watched from the house.
Every month brings different weather conditions and changing vistas. Every day this view looks different.
This is the season for eating from the croft, and the fresh produce is now coming in with abundance, even from the handful of small grow beds that we have. We are enjoying lettuce, kale, new potatoes, purple sprouting broccoli, chard, onions, peas and fresh herbs.
I’m being challenged to find new ways of serving this bounty, as we can’t store or freeze any produce this season.
This is whipped feta with roasted beetroot, toasted almonds, orange zest, chopped mint and parsley.
I was so excited to try our first baby beets from the croft that I made this dish up specifically to try them. It’s adapted from one that I found that uses goats cheese.
Scooped up with oat biscuits, it was a light nibble to eat before a main meal with friends, but would easily make a lunch on its own. This will become a summer staple, I think, and I’ve resolved to definitely grow more beetroots next year!
I can hardly believe that we’re in July already, but that seems to be where we find ourselves. The house build progress has been slow, but at last we are through the bulk of the sealing, taping, foiling and re-taping of the house walls and have moved into the next stage. Thank the stars that my husband doesn’t give up easily through what has been a marathon of a process.
Floor insulation slabs
He has been laying the insulation slabs on the internal floors in this past week in preparation for the underfloor heating pipes to go down. Then it will be the screed pouring before finally we have a level, warm floor for the house!
Work in progress
We have the plasterers booked in for September, so we need to complete the floors and basic pipe and wiring installation in the next two months to make sure that we secure their time. I know how quickly eight weeks will go, so it will be another busy time.
Our tinfoil-wrapped sitting room!
In parallel, I’m re-examining all the kitchen and bathroom material choices we made over a year ago. Prices and suppliers have all changed, and we need to get selections finalised and fresh estimates in so that we can secure fittings when we’re ready.
We’ve also sourced an excellent local lady joiner to make us custom built wardrobes and bookcases for the main bedroom, hall and sitting room areas at the end of the year. Hugh could build them, but having done everything else by then I suspect he will be on his knees. And the quality of her finished work looks excellent.
I’m especially excited by the prospect of the extremely high bookcase taking up the whole of the back wall in the sitting room. We’ll need a ladder to gain access to the upper shelves! But it will take a huge quantity of books. Just what we need.
Ravencroft Skye 