Category: storm

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Storm Crows and the Raven

I’m sitting in the static watching the rain and wind bluster across the Sound.

It’s a wild one out there today and I’m happy to be wrapped up indoors and sheltered. Husband is busy installing the boiler (how excited am I for hot water one day soon that I don’t have to boil on the stove!) and the spaniel has assumed his prone position by the fire. It’s not a day to be working outdoors.

In the field looking east across the hillside there are a large number of crows, all wheeling and soaring together, an impressive sight. There must be at least thirty or forty of them, collectively called, I believe, a murder of crows. I’m convinced that they’re playing in the wind.

Occasionally one will take off and hover in almost motionless balance, trying to hold its own against the force of the wind before tipping its wings and allowing itself to be blown backwards and upwards across the hill. The others then do the same in sequence, like dancers in a ballet . It’s definitely a social activity of some sort!

We also have a raven. We may have more than one, as they’re often in pairs, but we definitely have at least one.

I heard it calling yesterday morning, a gutteral, deep sound quite unlike the crows. I’m so pleased to hear that it’s still here. We named the house Raven House because we spotted a couple of them overhead when we first visited the croft.

Such enigmatic, intelligent birds. They seem very at home here on these rainswept hillsides.

And according to legend, where I discovered that they are the symbol on the MacDonald Battle Flag, whose lands we are on, they’ve been here since time immemorial.

I like that.

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Mud glorious mud

The torrential storms of the last few days have reduced the area around the caravan to a patch of deep mud.

It was supposed to have all been filled in with Type One, but at the last minute in August before the static arrived we realised that the area prepared for it was two metres shorter than was needed, and an emergency digger evacuation had to take place.

Which didn’t leave us time to backfill that extra area with aggregate. And which has now rendered access to the front door of the caravan almost impassable. It’s like the Somme around there. Wellies sink several inches in.

And of course although the spaniel could go the other way around the caravan to gain access, he always dives straight in to the mud pool. Nice.

So my task today whilst husband was working hard on the caravan was to wheelbarrow tonnes of type one around to the mud patch and shovel it manually into the vast, mud-sucking void in order to gain some traction and slightly drier access.

I couldn’t do it. I managed one barrow load and my knee was so stiff and painful that I had to stop. I’ve clearly over-estimated what I can do seven weeks after knee surgery and after several months of inactive lockdown. Another job for my poor husband.

We need this to be able to manoever the mattress into the static and have a better night’s sleep tonight! Slightly damp sofa cushions aren’t the best way to ensure a restful night, even though we were well wrapped up and cosy in our quilt in front of the fire.

Thankfully the weather gods have smiled on us at last and the next few days are forecast to be mild and mainly dry.

We will overcome. I just feel pretty pathetic right now.

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Storm Aiden

We woke to 60 mph South Westerly winds whipping up the waves and crashing them onto the rocks at Ardvasar Bay. The forecast was grim. Storm Aiden was in control and would fury unabated for the next two days.

We had originally planned to level and stabalise the static as our first job, necessary before we could connect up the electricity, water and gas bottles. But there was no way that we could safely work under or around the caravan in this wind.

We’d purchased railway sleepers to create a stable platform for the static, and they needed to be cut to size, a job that we managed to do inside the shell of the house so that we could avoid the driving rain and wind.

For now, we need to wait for the weather to abate. And make sure that we’ve always got a Plan B and C in our back pockets so that everything doesn’t stop when we get a storm.

Just heard that England is going back into full lockdown from Thursday. Even though we’re not set up properly yet, I’m glad that we’re here rather than London for this one…