Tag: isle of skye

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The track begins

And so it begins. The builder has been sending us photos and videos of the emerging access track whilst it’s being excavated. Very exciting. It looks wide enough to be a motorway in this picture! Sadly building regs dictate that it has to be wide enough for a fire truck to get up to the house, so it does seem wide, but it’s the minimum width we can get away with…

As we suspected, the gradient is very steep in places. The builder has excavated a borrow pit on the croft for extra soil and rock for infill and will try and smooth out the most extreme parts of the slope, although it’s always going to be a steep climb up to the house.

As we also suspected, the boggy bottom of the croft at the base of the hill is actually almost a lake once the soil has been removed. You can see the water level clearly in this photo, right where the entrance bellmouth will be connecting to the communal village road. The video from the digger shows this clearly too.

There will be drainage into both the culvert and back onto the land so that we can remove enough water to make the road viable, but also further along in the process we can perhaps dig a wildlife pond in this area. That plus willow and alder planting and we hope that it will dry out enough to be useable. If not, it’ll be a big natural wetland area, which I’m sure will do wonders for the croft’s natural diversity!

The builders seem to have managed to circumnavigate the two big granite outcrops at the top of the croft and run the road between them. Which is good. Rock blasting and removal is another expense that we are heartily glad not to incur on an already massively expensive road.

But it’s progress! We are so cheered to see this. At last, for the first time after all these months of planning, specification and permissions, it actually seems real.

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Digger on the croft

The builders have just emailed to say that they’ve moved a digger onto the croft in the expectation that they will be able to start groundworks (the access road and hard standing for the house) any day now.

This small positive piece of information has lifted my entire week.

It’s starting at last…😆

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The Seventh Week

We are about to enter our seventh week of lockdown.

I’m getting quite used to our new normality. Of course I miss restaurants, galleries and live music a little, but the truth is that we didn’t used to do these things that often.

I find myself baking and cooking much more than normal with four hungry adults in the house. We’re going to roll out of lockdown, I suspect, based on the trays of brownies, shortbreads and breads that we’ve been eating. Whether it’s comfort eating or what, we’re certainly eating a lot.

Where I’d normally do a supplementary shop each week to top up on bread and fresh vegetables, I can’t do that now, restricted to one delivery slot a week by the online supermarkets and not wanting to send anyone out on an inessential journey.

I have to plan ahead meticulously to ensure I don’t forget anything essential. It’s made me more careful and certainly more creative, substituting ingredients where I don’t have exactly what I need.

I made a malt loaf last week, my first ever, and couldn’t get black treacle for love nor money for some reason. Baking goods such as flour, yeast, eggs and sugar have all been really tough to get. So I substituted a few tablespoons of pomegranate molasses instead and it tasted delicious. The smugness at my own ingenuity was not pretty to see.

Bread baking skills have been essential, so I’ve been baking rolls, baguettes and loaves, finding some brilliant basic recipes. The offspring aren’t fans of sourdough so there’s been less of that.

In the first few weeks of lockdown I couldn’t get a supermarket shop at all, and resorted to midnight trawling of websites to see who would deliver what. As a consequence we’ve found the worlds best sausages from a farm shop in Lincolnshire (seriously good), and a South East London butcher whose beef is to die for. Small producers, both, with care for their animals at the heart of their production.

The experience has been so good that from now on that’s where my pork, beef and sausages will come from. I think that anything that we can do to help support small farms or producers at this time is a good thing. Once up in Skye we’ll source local equivalents and eat them less often to make it affordable.

It’s heartbreaking to think of how many small makers and companies will go to the wall in these tough times.

Stay safe, and I hope that you are all managing to survive this new reality, however temporary it may be.

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The kindness of strangers

We haven’t really met our new neighbours yet on the island.

Through sleuthing and other nefarious means, I’ve tracked down a few of them on Facebook and Instagram, and reached out to make connections. It’s felt like a way of keeping in touch with our dream and starting the process of getting to know people, even if we can’t be there right now.

Almost everyone has been warmly welcoming.

One particular couple have gone out of their way to send us frequent photos from our croft on sunny days, and videos of the local shoreline or the burn with the soothing sounds of water in the background to keep our spirits up.

I can’t tell you how uplifting it is to receive such kindness.

At times it seems that our whole world is on hold through this pandemic, and the thoughtfulness of strangers who send pictures and videos, along with messages of encouragement and welcome is wonderful beyond words.

Thankyou, Di and Ruud. We look forward to getting to know you better once we are on the island later this year. It’s so good to have you as neighbours.

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London Lockdown

The streets and squares are empty here in London. It’s quite surreal for a city that was packed with people only a week ago. I know that they’re in the houses and flats somewhere, living their lives behind the windows, but it feels deserted.

London is now officially in lockdown. Bars, restaurants, cafes, gyms and businesses closed. Very limited public transport. No cars on the road.

Buying food is now a problem. We have some stores of dried and frozen food, but have no idea how or when we will be able to buy more. Online food services are overloaded and either suspended or not taking on new customers due to demand. The local Tesco supermarket has been stripped back to the bare shelves through panic buying.

I have bread flour, and when my current loaf runs out I will bake bread at home. Sourdough, flatbreads, rolls, scones. As long as I can source flour we won’t starve. I know how to make meals from scratch and cook with the dried pulses and grains that we always have on hand, but I do wonder how many of the generation who don’t cook this way are going to cope.

Perhaps this will be a reset for humanity. Maybe this will act as a very real warning that we have lived disposably, wastefully and with excess for too long. I believe that we will get through this, but I also think that what we will be left with when we do will be a very different world.

On the Skye build front- it looks as if work should start in the next few weeks at last, subject to contracts next week. If we still have builders who are able and allowed to work, that is. I can’t think in chunks of more than a week at a time at the moment so where we go from here is very uncertain.

Both Hugh and I wish that we were a year further along and had the resources of the croft behind us for isolation, but there’s no merit in that thinking. We are here and we need to make the best of our current reality. All this has done is to re-strengthen my resolve to be more independent – to grow vegetables, keep a well stocked pantry of essentials, and build the life skills to get through such times as these as easily as possible.

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Knitting through uncertainty

When the going gets tough, dig out your largest, brightest ball of yarn and get knitting!

With the whole world seemingly in meltdown, either quarantined in their homes or trapped in an endless loop of panic buying toilet roll, our house build problems seem to pale into insignificance.

I am recovering at home this week following a manipulation under anaesthetic on my replacement knee.

As such, whilst waiting to hear about revised costs and start dates for the house build which I am sure will be delayed even further, I am keeping my knee mobile with an exercise machine, dutifully swallowing my pain medication and knitting a very loud, very yellow scarf.

Coping mechanisms for the times, eh..

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Challenging times

Could we have possibly chosen a more challenging time in which to build our house and take early retirement? I think maybe not…

A combination of health, wealth and logistics challenges are dominating our lives right now.

I’ve had severe arthritis in both knees for a few years now, and decided that I needed to get this sorted if I was going to be an active helpmeet and partner in croft life.

As such in December last year I had a left knee total knee replacement. The recovery has been slow and very painful over the past few months, and progress has not been as planned or hoped for.

I’m writing this from a hospital bed having just gone through a Manipulation under Anaesthetic to try and break down the scar tissue that has formed (despite physio therapy), and get a few degrees more flexibility back. It’s now massively swollen and painful, but should be able to bend and straighten properly once everything has calmed down.

We thought long and hard about elective surgery in a London hospital as the city is going through lockdown to try and control the virus spread. In the end, the small window of opportunity for this process, combined with the fact that I think that hospitals will be under even more pressure in the months to come, meant that I felt that I should have it done now.

The Coronavirus panic has also caused the stock markets to melt down. In the worst trading week for decades we’ve seen over 25% wiped off our savings for the house and our future life. I hope that this will eventually bounce back, but whether it will do so in time for us is a matter for speculation and great concern. This was already tight, and now it’s even more important that we find ways of cutting the costs to make our build viable. Doubly worrying as costs have only been going in the other direction…

To that end, the builder is arranging to go back to the site next week to look again at the access road and try and work with us to get the costs down. This is just a portion of the spend, but if we start with an element that is three times its original estimate that really doesn’t bode well for the rest.

So, in this time of doom and gloom, what are we doing? We are not giving up. We will fight to find ways to make this work, and are as determined as we ever were that we want this move.

Not that moving to this new lifestyle will solve the worlds problems or even isolate us from them, but we believe that a life of purpose, living closer to nature and with a small community around us will be a healthier and happier way to live.

Bring it on 👍

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The static looms….

We have been working our way through costs as meticulously as we can before the build actually starts. The architects estimates were way out. By a country mile.

It’s becoming clear that the only way that we can complete this project is to strip out £100k of costs, and that means a few things are sadly certain.

Firstly, that there is no way that we can afford the builders to do more than build the house. Groundworks, access road, house erection, cladding, guttering and windows. Everything else we will need to do ourselves.

Secondly, we will need to put a static caravan on the land and at some point move into it in order to finish the work. I suspect this means a Highland winter and Christmas in a caravan… 😬

Thirdly, there isn’t any chance that it will be complete as planned this year. The exterior build should be complete by the summer, but the interior will take us much longer to complete than it would with professional builders and will probably run into next year.

We will be offline whilst we finalise plans and put some things in motion.

Check in again soon!

Send warm socks!

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The dreaded cost overrun

I guess in a way it was always going to happen, despite our best efforts to avoid it. The Quantity Surveyor has just shared his schedule of costs with us, and it’s way over both budget and the initial estimates that we’d been given.

It was a stomach wrenching moment when we worked our way down his itemised spreadsheet and realised that the costs were about 30% over what we’d been led to expect. With some big costs, such as the utilities, not yet factored in…

And so late in the process! Too late to feasibly change anything big.

Having tried to control costs as much as possible by buying a ‘turnkey’ solution from a reputable firm of architects, we’ve been scuppered by the quotes from their builders for the groundworks, access road and actual build of the house.

Although the SIP kit is a fixed price and estimates for the erection were provided, their builder has come in with quotes way over what was initially estimated.

We’re now faced with challenging those figures, and if we can’t get them down to a reasonable level, which I think unlikely, potentially trying to source another builder. Not an easy task on the island where builders are scarce and already over-subscribed with work for the year. We may have to spread the net more widely.

And if costs still prove too high, we may have to do some of the work ourselves to make this in any way affordable.

There is a definite feeling that some of these figures are what we call “London” prices. (Ah, they’re from London. They must have loads of money and will accept any cost that we give them.) That’s a bitterly sad thought, and one that I sincerely hope doesn’t prove to be true.

Let’s see where this next week takes us…

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Mushroom growing

One of the foods that I really love is mushrooms. Just about all mushrooms, but especially the meaty, flavourful ones such as ceps or shiitake mushrooms.

Living in France for many years gave me an even deeper appreciation of them, with the wild mushroom season kicking off an almost religious fervour in the locals, and restaurants using them in everything whilst they were fresh and plentiful. The flavour and textures were unlike anything I’d tasted from shop bought mushrooms, and I was hooked.

We’ve been looking at growing mushrooms using spore-loaded plugs drilled into beech logs on the croft. We have the wood, the rain and the space.

Skye has a good climate for mushrooms – relatively mild and wet – and there used to be someone who grew mushrooms commercially there until recently, so we think that they would be successful.

It takes a few years for the mycelium to take, spread into the fibre of the logs and the underlying ground and fruit into mushrooms, but then it’s possible to crop for many years.

Mycelium, the thread-like network of spores that propagate mushrooms are fascinating.

Research has shown that the presence of mycelium is beneficial to spreading and keeping nutrients locked into soil, and the no-dig method relies on not disturbing this network for maximum soil fertility and crop health.

Trees also use a network like this to communicate and exchange food and healing chemicals to each other beneath the ground. It’s remarkable.

However, back to the edibles!

We can get spore-loaded plugs online for shiitake, oyster, chicken of the wood and enoki mushrooms, all of which are worth a try.

Will keep you posted (but with a trial period of two to three years before we would expect results and enough for a portion of mushrooms on toast, don’t hold your breath..!)