Category: storm

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Settling into January

The winter gales are well underway now here on Skye, howling around the house and singing in the woodburner flue. The good thing is that the house feels solid and warm, despite being perched on the cusp of this very exposed hill overlooking the sea.

A break in the storms

I still haven’t got used to the lack of rocking motion that we used to have in the caravan whenever the wind blew! I’m sure I developed sea legs in the two years that we lived in it.

Woodburner doing its thing

We’ve decided not to unpack any further boxes until we’ve finished the electrics in the house and got some storage built. At the moment we have no lights or live power in about half the house and no bookcases, wardrobes or shelves. Just the essentials. As most of what we will bring in from the boxes will have nowhere to be put away it makes sense to hold off for a while.

Husband is continuing with the fitting of lights and sockets. Once he’s finished that, a good few more weeks work, I’d say, we can start building the shelving for the linen cupboard, server room and pantry. Then we can start unpacking a bit more.

We have just ordered the wood for the bookcases and wardrobes and have a joiner lined up to build them for us in February. That will be a big step forward in making the house a home. At the moment it’s still feeling a bit echoey and empty.

Sunrise this morning

But we’re loving waking up to the most incredible sunrises. The bedroom faces South East and often on even the most grey and dreich of Scottish winter days there’s a brief, glorious burst of early morning sunlight before the clouds swarm across the sky.

Borrowed friends croft dog living it up on the sofa in the sun

The sunlight in the house during the day is fabulous. The low winter sun fills the rooms. Once we have finished I think that this will be a wonderful space to live in. I can already see that we will need to agree on blinds soon..

My job this coming week is to osmo oil the oak interior doors. There are fourteen of them to do, and each door needs two coats, so that will keep me busy for a while. It’s good to be useful beyond feeding us both.

Kitchen in use, with cooks G&T to hand

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Top barn

The barn build started this week. This is something we wish we’d had the time to do earlier in the process of setting up the croft, but at least it’s going up now!

It was chosen for its strength rather than its looks, as you’ll see from the photos here. Now that the panels are going on it looks like a huge sea container.

Perched atop the windiest part of this exposed hillside it needed to be strong enough to withstand our 90 mph gales without flinching. Two years living on the croft has taught us not to underestimate the winter storms when they come, as they do every year.

This barn is industrially rated for high winds and is constructed of insulated steel panels. As soon as the guys started to put it up it became clear that it was a substantial construction, which is a good thing, and exactly as planned, as the winds here would flatten a lesser building in the first storm.

Big bolts

It’ll serve multiple purposes. Part of it will be a workshop for husbands build and carpentry equipment, part storage of croft produce like potatoes and root vegetables, as well as storage of boxes and spare stuff from the house, and part equipment/car cover with a roll top door at one end.

I can’t help feeling that despite its enormous size that we’re going to fill it…

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Running the storm

Unplanned events are often the best.

An impromptu offer of a trip on a friends boat came by text the other evening, and as the weather looked fair and we don’t get a chance to get out onto the water often, we jumped at the opportunity.

Incredible light

We drove down to Heaste, a village some miles away, where the boat was moored at the local pontoon. Heaste sits at the head of Loch Eishort, a long narrow sea loch that opens up into the sea, and that’s fringed on one side by the jagged silhouette of the Cuillin mountains in the distance.

Our friends, mussel farmers, steered the boat into the mouth of the loch where the waters mingled with those of Loch Slapin and the open sea, killed the engine and let her drift slowly in on the tide.

Husband gutting fish over the side of the boat

It was a fabulous evening. The mackerel were biting and we landed half a dozen or so in the first few minutes of fishing, clearly having hit a shoal. Beautiful fish, dazzling with iridescent turquoise markings and firm flesh.

Storm clouds gathering

As the sun dipped into the west, black clouds started to gather ominously and the first spots of rain fell. We decided that we’d pack up and motor back in, and it proved to be not a moment too soon as the wind picked up and drove the first spots of rain upon us.

Double rainbow over the hills

The skies were a remarkable colour. Dark clouds infused with the golden light of the low sun, and a double rainbow glowing across the hillsides. It was a constantly changing tableau of light as the minutes passed and we motored back, running just ahead of the storm into safe harbour.

A magical evening, not least because of the weather. Good company, the joy of being out at sea, and the chance to experience Skye’s changing light and weather from a unique perspective.

Running the storm by @judithbrown
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Stormy days

Rain is lashing down in torrents from a leaden grey sky as I write. There’s ice in it too, and a stiff north westerly wind to drive it home.

From the caravan

The badly fitting, single glazed windows of the caravan don’t seem to provide much protection against this weather as I peer out into the gloom. I’m well wrapped up with three layers, including thermals, and I’m still chilly.

We’ve had an incredible run of storms so far this year, one right upon the coat tails of the previous one. Storms Corrie, Dudley, Eunice and Franklin have rolled over the island in the last six weeks in rapid succession, bringing 80 mph winds, hail and snow with little respite in between.

We’ve had very disturbed sleep this past month as the worst of the winds seem to come after dark. When they start, the caravan rocks and shudders as if it’s alive, straining against the lorry straps that lash it down like a wounded animal.

The noise of the hailstorms is deafening. It’s impossible to sleep through. It’s as if someone is emptying buckets of marbles into a tin bath on your head. Even burrowing further under the warmth of the duvet doesn’t dull the noise.

Image Francis Yeats

I bake. I make bread and cakes to warm and sustain us. I make soups and stews and sweet, eggy puddings and crumbles.

Brioche buns. Just because.

I venture out in the small, quiet pockets of calm between the storms and wonder at the crofts capacity to hold water. Everything is sodden, soaked.

I wear many layers. Recently I’ve taken to wearing my fingerless gloves in the caravan during the day to keep my hands warm. Tea has become an important, warming ritual in the afternoons, hands wrapped around the comforting heat of the mug.

Spring is coming, I tell myself. It’s coming.

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Storm Malik

Whilst storm Malik rages, whipping the tarpaulined piles of material stored at the front of the house into a frenzy, progress inside the house continues slowly.

The wind was huge last night. It was apparently gusting to about eighty miles per hour, and it was so loud that it was almost impossible to sleep. The caravan was dancing in the wind, walls flexing and straining hard against the webbing straps that hold it down.

Piles of building material on a calmer day

Morning brought a damage assessment between the storm flurries. Nothing too serious thankfully – a few pipes blown out of place, the bin and bits of wood and building material blown across the croft, and the cover on the rotary clothes dryer totally disappeared . I suspect it’s flown all the way to Norway by now.

We have a few more days of this predicted so we will be battening down the hatches and riding it out as best we can.

On the house front, we have an almost plasterboarded corridor and hall now. Progress.

Corridor

It makes such a difference to see walls inside rather than just spaces. I’ve been struggling with the kitchen design and colours, unable to tell how much light the room will have, but over the next few weeks I should be in a position to see exactly what it will look like. Then I will need to get my skates on and get finalising selections..

It’s true that these days we almost have too much choice. Although having said that, I can never find quite what I have in my minds eye. I seem to have a remarkable ability to love what is not trending at the moment, making it difficult to source. I will slap myself into decisions soon.

Kitchen still awaiting plasterboard and the light well

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Autumn gales

Winds on the island can be severe. We arrived here a year ago in the teeth of Storm Aiden, and almost a year later to the day here we are again with the autumn gales upon us.

This is not a photo of a stormy shoreline

We are a bit more seasoned this time around. I know now that the house is unlikely to blow down, and that the caravan is equally unlikely to sail down the hillside, tethered as it is to four large tonne bags of hardcore.

Hardcore bag tethered to caravan

However, knowledge doesn’t make it any less dramatic. Yesterday evening as we went to bed the noise of the rain and the hail on the metal roof of the caravan was deafening. Once the hail flurry had passed the sound of the wind whistling through the lorry strap tethers took over. The caravan also rocked vigorously as the wind fought to lift it, only to be slapped back down with the counterweight of the hardcore bags.

One on each corner …

All in all, a bit difficult to sleep. It was like being in a washing machine at times. It’s testament to our familiarity with it now that we somehow managed to drift off and got a reasonably good nights sleep.

Winter is almost upon us. Get the hot chocolate in and dig out those big jumpers!

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Sweet picklin’

There’s something very primal and satisfying about preserving food that you’ve grown yourself. Crazily so. It must be somewhere buried deep in RNA, and it seems to be triggered by the first wisps of autumn or the smell of woodsmoke.

The sweet days of summer are still with us but I can already sense the onset of autumn with my harvests.

Even though there were just a few handfuls of shallots and onions from the croft that could be used it somehow felt important to mark this, our first ever crop, by preserving them.

Small Shallots being prepared

I’ve been pickling onions for years, but have never really settled on a recipe that I love. This year, watching the storm roll in across the mountains of the mainland from the comfort of the caravan, I browsed through the few preserving books that I have here and created a blend of spices that I think may work well for us.

Pickling is a bit of a time consuming exercise at times. The onions have to be harvested, dried off, then peeled and trimmed.

Onions in sea salt overnight

Salting them is supposed to keep them crisp once preserved, so into a bowl with lots of coarse sea salt overnight they went. Nobody wants soggy pickles .

This morning they were rinsed and dried ready for next stage.

Spiced vinegar being prepared

The vinegar that I’ve used is white wine vinegar rather than the usual malt vinegar that seems to be traditional in UK kitchens. It has a 6% acidity count, slightly higher than malt or distilled vinegar. It’s been sweetened with sugar and spiced with black peppercorns, coriander seeds, mustard seeds, chilli flakes and bay leaves.

All my kilner and preserving jars are still in storage so I’ve had to make do with sterilised, recycled jars. They seem to have worked well.

Recycled jars

A kind neighbour has offered me ridge cucumbers to pickle and I’m scheduled to pick them up next week. I’ve kept some dill and dill flowers back ready for this moment…

May you savour the remaining sweet days of summer, and sweet picklin’ to you all.

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Spring storms & wild garlic

The weather on the island has taken a turn for the worse since the Spring Equinox.

As if to laugh at our feeble attempts to plant, a prolonged few days of stormage has reminded us that Winter hasn’t done with us yet.

A neighbour brought us a huge bag of wild garlic picked from local woodlands, which was most welcome. I chopped the fragrant leaves through salad and reserved the plants that still had their bulbs and roots attached so that we could plant them on the croft.

Husband dug them into a damp, grassy bank above the stream under dappled shade. Hopefully they’ll take and we’ll have the start of our own wild garlic patch before too long.

Just as he finished the planting, the heavens opened. We’ve now had a solid 48 hours of hail, rain and high winds, and it’s not abating any time soon.

Our tiny burn went from a gentle trickle of water to this rushing torrent within hours…

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Gales, rain & lentil soup

The cold, crisp winter days of the last month have been replaced by a storm front bringing with it high winds and torrential rain. I knew it couldn’t last.. 😊

Last night the wind veered to the South West from the Easterlies that had been dominating for the last few weeks, and the caravan started to flex like a boat in the wind.

As I write, curled up on the cushions in the caravan, everything is moving. The noise of the wind, which is about 55 mph at the moment, is incredible. The rain sounds like a thousand marbles being flung at the windows, rattling and crashing loudly against the glass.

I can no longer see the mountains across the Sound or the sea itself through the sheet of rain that has wrapped itself around us.

Then it clears, replaced with an incredible luminosity until the next bank of rain-heavy clouds bear down on us.

Luckily we are well strapped down, so I don’t have any real fear of being scooped up and tumbled down the hillside, although at times it feels like that!

I drink my tea and soothe our rather startled old dog who doesn’t understand why everything is moving. He’s never really understood the caravan.

I’ve made some garlic lentil soup to warm us both through later.

It won’t change the weather, but it will provide some comfort on this wild winters day.

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Snow flurries and hot, spiced apple juice

Storm Bella took hold last night. Winds of up to 70 mph, and driving hail and sleet for most of the night.

We didn’t get much sleep with the caravan rocking violently in the wind, but we awoke this morning to find the storm blown out and to a light scattering of snow on the croft.

When it’s windy the caravan is especially cold.

It’s not well insulated and the windows and doors are badly fitted and allow a gale to blow through them. We’ve done what we can with insulating tape and thermal curtains, but we can’t avoid the wind up here on the top of the hill.

After breakfast, which was taken sitting in a blanket in front of the fire, I made hot, spiced apple juice to warm us up.

Full of cinnamon, nutmeg, cranberries, juniper berries and slices of clementines, it’s definitely helping with our Vitamin C intake as well as being comforting and delicious.

We’ve run out of apple juice now until I brave the shops again so from here on in it’s going to have to be hot, spiced cider… 😊