Category: scotland

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Live music is back!

One of the things that used to be a huge part of our lives and which we’ve missed since lockdown began has been live music.

Being on the Isle of Skye doesn’t mean that gigs stop. Far from it. The nature of them is a little different (we’re unlikely to be seeing the Foo Fighters in the tent at Armadale any time soon), but we are rich in local musicians and there is a very active music scene here.

I’ve always preferred small venue music anyway – the intimacy and immediacy of a band or singer just a few metres away is, to my way of thinking, a much more real experience than being part of a crowd so big that the best view is via the video stream screens.

Innes Watson and Ross Ainslie

This summer SEALL was able to restart its festival programme, albeit with social distancing and other Covid protection measures in place. Established in 1991, the name means Look or See in Gaelic and is pronounced “Shall”. It celebrates the wealth of home grown musical talent in the area.

The first of the events we attended a few nights ago was an evening concert held outdoors in the grounds of Armadale Castle. Innes Watson and Ross Ainslie, two very talented young musicians. It was so good. I love that we celebrate Gaelic culture in its music and that the next generation fuse it so seamlessly with their own creations. We have a few more concerts booked in for July.

Open Air at Armadale Castle

We also watched Skye Live via livestream feed a few nights back. An amazing fusion of traditional and electronica performed and filmed in the Mountains in Skye. I’ve copied a YouTube link to it for those of you that would like to have a taster. https://youtu.be/596iVkMGj-g

Niteworks on the Quiraing

I’m so happy that live music is back.

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The People Summer

The days are long and filled with light. It’s also been a week of warm, hazy weather so we’ve been making the most of it with friends whilst it’s here. We’re never more than a few days away from rain here on the island!

A fellow Instagrammer bought a cottage here on the North of the island for renovation at about the same time that we purchased the croft, and he and his family drove down to meet us yesterday to take a look at the house build and what we were doing with the land.

The car scrambled up the drive to the top of the hill, its doors opened, and out burst five gorgeous kids, the parents and two dogs. It was a complete explosion of sound and energy as we rounded up enough tumblers for drinks, answered questions, watered the dogs and showed them around.

For two people normally unused to groups of people and the sound and motion that accompany them, especially after a quiet and pretty isolated last six months, it was quite exhausting, albeit in the nicest of ways! I am in awe of parents who can cope with such levels of energy. We have become unused to people…

We sat in what was left of the sun with a vegan BBQ (simple chickpea patties, vegan sausages, garlic fried potatoes and grilled red peppers) and watched the clouds gather over the mountains of Knoydart.

Sweetness was added with a vegan strawberry trifle made in the biggest salad bowl I could find. Minty, their daughter, made delicious chocolate cupcakes.

A lovely day. The rain did start towards the end of the afternoon and we had to decamp to the house, but it didn’t ruin anything.

As we waved them off we reflected that since living here we’ve spent time with more people in the last six months, despite all Covid restrictions, than we did in the previous five years in London. For two massive intraverts, that’s astonishing. It’s been a summer of people.

Jonathan is a brilliant photographer and he took these iconic pictures whilst here. You can find more of his images on Instagram @skye.cottage.

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The visit

It’s been nearly a year since we saw family, with the stepsons being based in Manchester for university and work.

At last one of them has been able to make it up here to the island and we’re enjoying sharing this amazing place with them.

I’d forgotten the effect that Skye can have on someone when they visit for the first time.

It’s been over twenty years since I first came here, and although the grandeur and beauty of the landscape doesn’t diminish, its impact becomes less over the years as its mountains and seas become more familiar. You forget that first, overwhelming intake of breath when the magnitude of this landscape hits you for the first time.

Rainshowers

Much as we do our best to convey the magnificence of place through our posted images, nothing can match the sense of being here physically, the wind in your hair, the rain on your face and the spirit of the island embracing you with its rawness. And there’s been nothing BUT rain over these past few days, sadly.

Amazing skies

It’s been remarkable to watch this sun-loving city dweller suddenly “get” what has made us want to build our lives here in this remote place. I know they both think we’ve gone a bit mad, but as we’ve travelled around over the last few days the sheer draw-dropping beauty of the island (albeit glimpsed through gaps in the rain) has definitely started to take hold.

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We have warmth!

Ha ha! Happy faces! The sun has returned! The air and the soil have warmed up and as I speak we have blue skies and a soft, warm breeze.

It will be the midges soon, but I’m hoping that being at the top of a hill with more wind than most that we’ll escape the worst of them. We’re prepared, just in case – I’ve bought midge hats and nets so that if we do get bombarded we have a fighting chance of avoiding being eaten alive whilst we run back to the caravan.

Impromptu BBQ

We had an impromptu barbecue last night to celebrate the lovely evening. These shots were taken at about 7pm. As the sun dipped behind the hill at the back of the croft at around 10pm it started to get colder, and we wrapped up in blankets and added a bit more wood to the fire.

The birds are singing, the sun is shining, and husband has thrown open all the doors and windows in the house whilst he is working so that it cools down.

I don’t want to count my chickens, but it seems like summer has come at last…

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Sunshine & seedlings

After a very long, cold May we’ve awoken to warmer temperatures and sunshine at last.

Sunrise over Sleat

This photo was taken by one of our lovely neighbours from the hill above the croft whilst out on a 5am run this week. Not a sight I’d have been awake enough to capture. Thank you, Jonny.

The sun is rising before 5am now and not setting until around 11pm, giving us long, soft, light-filled days. We have another month to go before the summer solstice, so there’s more to come. It’s already not fully dark at nights and the long, light evenings on the croft are magical, if a bit chilly up till now.

Raised beds on the croft

We have cuckoos and swallows, linnets and skylarks, bluebells and wild garlic in the hedgerows. Suddenly everything is bursting into green leaf, and it’s feeling at last as if we’re on the brink of early summer.

First day of exposure! Shallots, beetroot, red veined sorrel and garlic

I’ve taken the mesh off the vegetable beds today to get a proper look at what’s survived through this very dry, cold spring. Some things are looking very sad for themselves (leeks, lettuces I’m looking at you) but others seem to have pulled through quite robustly (full marks red cabbage, kale, beetroot, potatoes, purple sprouting broccoli and shallots).

Taunton Deane kale, red cabbage and onions

Let’s hope that summer is on its way at long last!

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Herbage

I’ve been keen to grow as many herbs as possible.

We use lots of fresh herbs in our home cooking and they’re relatively expensive to buy from the small supermarket locally here , IF you can get them. Anything beyond parsley, mint and floppy-leaved basil doesn’t seem to make an appearance.

Tashkent mint

We use tons of mint, dill, parsley, chives, thyme, rosemary and coriander, so it makes sense to grow it on the croft if we can.

Flat-leaved parsley grown from seed

Mine has definitely been the innocence of the novice. I germinated flat-leaved parsley and mint from seed here in the caravan spare room in March.

Each is an incredibly slow process at 57 degrees north, and it was only after struggling for months did I read that almost nobody grows mint from seed as it’s so much easier to propogate from cuttings…ah well. We live and learn.

Peppermint seedlings after three months of snails pace growth. The spearmint is even tinier..

I’m hoping it will all be easier once we have the polycrub in place. Next season. Meanwhile, we’ve had some other successes – the lemon thyme and dill have grown well.

Dill the Dog

Onwards and upwards! At last I’m going to plant out the mint, borage, rosemary and dill. The last frost date has passed and as soon as the rain stops, they’re going out.

Borage

I’ve been hardening them off, of course. I’m not going to throw them to the wolves like Spartan Mothers leaving their babies on the hillside overnight to see if they can survive on their own. Not quite. But it’s time that they manned up. Or womanned up. Whatever.

They’re going out.

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First meal outdoors

It was a long, hard day after a heavy week of work on the build and the croft. We decided to add a fifth vegetable bed to the growing area (remind me I said we’d start small this year? 😳) so that I could plant up my globe artichoke seedlings.

These perennials grow huge, so they ideally needed a bed of their own, which I wanted to site perpendicular to the rest to add a kind of windbreak effect.

New veg bed

For speed, and cost (the price of wood is crazy right now) we decided to use what we had on the croft and make another hugelkutur bed. The existing ones are working well for us, and we still have lots of rushes and soil that we can reuse.

Countless wheelbarrow loads of cardboard, rushes, soil, compost and woodchip later we had another bed ready for planting. It takes us about  four hours to build one of these, and it’s heavy, manual work.

We decided that we deserved a bit of relaxation and supper outside after all that exertion. We carried out some chairs and a fold-up table and positioned them amongst the building rubbish.

We’d recently bought a firepit BBQ which needed testing, so we fired her up and cooked supper on it. There’s nothing quite like the taste of real charcoal grilled Scottish steaks eaten outdoors… Everything tastes better in the open air, I think.

It was lovely to relax together eating, drinking and watching the incredible vista of sea and sky in front of us.

We added some building wood scraps to the fire to make a bit of a blaze after the charcoal had died down, and sat toasting our toes with a small glass of whisky, watching the rain and rainbows sweep across the Knoydart peninsula.

Such incredible natural beauty. Feeling very lucky to be here.

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Small steps back to normality

Our lives here on the croft are by nature pretty quiet. We spend our days mostly working on the house build or the land, only going out to do food shopping or to collect building or garden supplies.

As things start to open up here in Scotland again after a year of lockdown, however, we are seeing a slow return towards normality.

We managed a lovely lunch at a local restaurant with friends last Sunday. Although the venue wasn’t able to serve wine with the meal as we were eating indoors (which regulations don’t permit) it was still lovely to have food cooked for us and to have good company whilst we ate.

This weekend we also attended a market in Armadale Castle’s grounds. The locals were out in force to support it, and it was fun to browse the stalls and to sit down and have a coffee and catchup blether with friends.

We didn’t need, or buy, much. A loaf of artisan corn bread and some delicious pear frangipane tarts from the Isle of Skye Baking Co. and a few chive plants from Hamish’s plant stall, but really it was all about the meeting up with friends and neighbours after months of isolating in our cottages and crofts.

Small steps back to normality. There are further easing of restrictions over the coming month. We’re so looking forward to seeing the kids once we’re able to. They still haven’t seen the croft due to lockdown, and we haven’t been with them since last summer. Soon now.

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Arctic conditions at 57 degrees north

It’s been a very cold spring so far.

We continue to have frosty mornings and very cold nights, so it’s not been advisable to put out any tender plants without serious fleecing.

My “plant room” in the caravan is still full, and although I’ve planted out a few purple spouting broccoli and beetroot plants, some cabbage, kale, and some sorrel, everything else is under wraps for a bit longer. I’ve direct sown carrots and parsnips into the beds but nothing has germinated yet…. I don’t blame it.

It did give us the opportunity to make another hugelkutur bed with cut reeds as the base, as I’ve estimated that I’ve still grown too much to fit into our prepared growing space. Always a learning, eh?

Everything is heavily mulched with woodchip to try and minimise soil runoff. We’ve almost gotten through a few tonne bags of that already, and I’ve still got the paths around the beds to lay..

Small beginnings. And many learnings.

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Snipe in the grass

It was late in the evening and the light was slowly fading from the croft. We were packing up a few things by the house site and were on our way back to the caravan when suddenly an eerie, reverberating noise split the peace of the night.

We couldn’t see what had made the sound, nor could we identify it. It came again. We could still see nothing.

Did we have aliens on the hillside in the grass?

The sound reminded me of the noise made by one of those long, plastic tubes that we whirled around our heads for fun as children in the Seventies. A high pitched, reverberating, whining rattle. Quite bizarre.

An Internet search soon found the noise. It was the sound of a Snipe. The male of the species apparently reverberates its tail feathers as it performs its courtship ritual in the spring, making this incredible noise.

https://www.xeno-canto.org/595646

We have Snipe! I’m ridiculously excited by the discovery for me of a new bird on the croft. How wonderful.