Category: scotland

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The final few yards

It’s less than a week now until we move, and we’re starting to flag a bit.

Every room is full of boxes, either full or waiting to be filled, lining the rooms like some cardboard termite mound whilst we squeeze through tunnels between them.

It’s tiring. Both the constant decision making process – to store, to the caravan, to the charity box, to trash – and the packing and manhandling of the boxes to safe stacks around the house.

There is nothing that brings home the stark reality of having too much stuff like the process of having to pack it away.

To be fair, the bulk of it is books. I honestly don’t know how many boxes of books we have. It must be in the hundreds.

Husband and I both share an abiding love of books, but combining our collections when we married three years ago has resulted in a veritable tsunami of books. Working in the book industry for major publishers over the last thirteen years has only fed the beast. It’s overwhelming. We’ve never had them all unpacked…

When we get to the island we’re going to have to do further weeding out and disposal. There simply won’t be enough wallspace to build enough book shelves to take them all, I’m sure of it.

However, we’re now on the final stretch. The last few yards.

The day of the move is almost upon us, She says with a big, tired smile.

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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 😀👍.

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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?

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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.

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Wild flower meadow

We’ve only been able to visit the croft a couple of times since we bought it, and those visits were usually during autumn or winter.

The main thing that we’d noticed on the land – apart from the absence of trees – was the dominance of reeds. They grew in thick clumps all over the croft. The crofter next door used to graze his sheep on the land, and this kept what grass there was between the reed clumps closely cropped.

Our neighbours walked up onto the croft this afternoon whilst there were no builders on site, and took these pictures of the meadow below the house lying peacefully in the sunshine.

We were delighted to see that the grasses had regenerated and that there were wild flowers scattered through them. We haven’t seeded or done anything to this area – this is just one seasons regrowth now that the sheep are no longer on the land.

We can’t wait to see what else grows. The land has never been worked except for sheep grazing, and as such it’s completely organic and natural.

We’ll try as hard as possible not to disturb this habitat with our tree planting plans. The habitat that this provides to wildlife is invaluable, and to our eyes it’s beautiful.

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New beginnings

It’s lovely to see my two stepsons so excited about the next step in their lives. At 20 and 22 they’re both moving out of home this summer and have decided to take a flat together in Manchester.

They were up early yesterday looking at flats and planning next steps over mugs of tea in the kitchen.

I love that they can share living space and support each other whilst they finish university and find new work.

This has come at a good time for both of us. We’re in the process of downsizing possessions and packing up for the island, and many of the household things that we would have otherwise stored or sold can be passed on to them for their new flat, which will save them money.

It also means that the journey up to the Isle of Skye for visits is about four hours shorter than from London, which is a real bonus.

Whether the attraction of our remote cold, wet island and their wild-haired, welly-clad old folks will be enough to tempt them up to see us after the excitement of city living is entirely another matter! I hope so.

As I hope that the tranquility of our croft and the different pace of life there will provide a welcome haven for them from the madness of modern city dwelling whenever they need it.

New lives and new beginnings for all of us.

This is what life is all about.

❤️

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Tree Planting Plans

When we first saw the land, a number of pieces of life’s puzzle slipped neatly into place. The croft was steep and unsuitable for agriculture, but it would be perfect for trees.

Hugh and I both love trees and believe that there is a strong need to plant them, both to increase the biodiversity of the land but also to offset the effects of climate change with carbon capture in whatever way that we could.

We started to look into Woodland Croft creation. Despite the northern latitude, strong winds and exposed coastal location, many types of tree are naturalised and grow well on the island.

Sleat is the least exposed part of the island, a peninsula turning its face towards the mainland on the south side of Skye. As such, lying nestled between the Cuillins to the North West and the Knoydart hills to the South East, it’s at least partly sheltered from the full force of the Atlantic.

Although Skye is almost barren of trees, being famous for huge expanses of high moorland and mountain, Sleat has more trees than the rest of the island. We are lucky, and the more we looked into it, the more we felt that a diverse planting would be completely viable.

The Woodland Trust offer advice and help with tree planting, but due to the recent rise in interest in this area, they are completely overloaded. There are long lead times to even get to see them to discuss plans. They’ve handed over some of their work to the Scottish Forestry Commission, who have been in touch at last and who will be assessing the croft land for tree planting viability next week. We can’t wait for the report.

We expect the recommended species to be a mix of trees such as rowan, alder, blackthorn, grey willow, downy and silver birch, sessile oak, scots pine, hazel, wych elm, holly and aspen.

We want to supplement these plantings with wild, edible hedges filled with crab apple, blackberries and hawthorn, and an area of sheltered orchard with hazelnuts, apples, cherries and pears.

As soon as we have the Forestry Commission report we can discuss deer protection and build a planting plan for the land. Even though we know that the first trees probably won’t go in for at least another year, it still feels like a milestone in the journey!

The relative slowness of this process is frustrating, but in a way it’s also contemplative, allowing time for our initial thoughts to be challenged and supplemented with local wisdom. We’re watching other local crofts start this, and learning what works and what doesn’t.

Don’t get me going on the merits of spiral guards, staking, vole protection and windbreaks now…☺️

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Of sick dogs and cancelled flights

We’ve been waiting impatiently for the opportunity to get back up to Skye for the last three months now.

Work schedules, family commitments, and the time it took to complete the croft purchase all conspired to stretch that time out to what seemed like an agonisingly long wait.

But eventually the week of the flight to Inverness approached and we started packing our bags and finalising the visit arrangements. And then disaster struck.

In the week before we were due to leave, our lovely old spaniel got sick. Up several times a night, my husband slept downstairs on the sofa with him so that he would be close in case anything happened. Bertie was listless and weak, had continual diarrhoea which his medication didn’t seem to be helping, and we were terrified that his time had come.

We cancelled the flight and the accommodation. We cancelled the dog sitter. We couldn’t leave him.

Exhausted from several nights of worry and scant sleep, we despaired of when we would get the chance to make the trip again, feeling both frustrated and guilty at voicing our feelings at a situation that was of no-one’s making.

Last night he turned the corner. He brightened. He started to eat again. We breathed again and watched in delight as he gained in energy. We dared to wonder whether we could get him comfortable enough over the weekend to squeeze a short few days in on the island out of the original week that we had planned.

The bags are still there, still packed on the bedroom floor, awaiting the outcome of the next few days.

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As we approach Hogmanay

As we approach the turn of the year, and Hogmanay especially, it’s time to look forward in anticipation of the new year to come.

Tomorrow is a double day of reckoning for me – it was my fathers birthday as well as being New Years Eve. He was a Scot, and died some years ago, but is always in my thoughts on this day.

I like to think that although he chose to spend his retirement on the South Coast of England that he’d be secretly chuffed that I was returning to Scotland for mine. He is much of the reason that I have always felt a love for Scotland, bringing my brother and I up in familiarity with all the things that represented Scotland to him in terms of Stovies, white pudding, Lorne sausage, butteries, porridge, Edinburgh, the total superiority of the Scottish race and.. well, you get the picture. 😊

Here’s to planning approval and the start of the Croft build next year. Thank you for joining us!

Hoping that you all also have a wonderful 2019.