Tag: skye

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Ducts!

They may not be big enough to crawl through, but what the MVHR ducts lack in girth they make up for in number…

It looks a bit like spaghetti-geddon at the moment, with the ducts going everywhere. These loose ends will be fed into a manifold over the appliance wall in the kitchen, hence the waving around in mid air look. Husband has assured me he has it all under control and I have, to be fair, seen much labelling and even checklist tables.

You can see from this photo how useful the posi joists are in accommodating pipes, ducts and wiring. The gaps between the steel sections are big enough to be woven between.

The plasterboards are also going up. It’s strange how much they change the dimensions you perceive in each room.

All in all, it’s feeling like a good start to the year. The rain and sleet showers come and go but watching them from the big windows at the front of the house whilst work continues within is always inspiring.

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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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House build progress

It’s been a while since I shared anything on the housebuild itself, so I thought with the onset of the new year that it was time.

There’s been only slow progress on the house over the last few months, due to a number of factors like the move, setting up the caravan, problems with the caravan, supply delays, and to be honest, things that we have discovered need remedying before we can go further with the build.

Whilst we’re in dialogue with the builders to check a number of things, husband has been able to work on improving the air tightness of the construction by sealing every gap and then foil taping all the wall seams to ensure that we can be as draught-free as possible.

That work is slow and painstaking, especially in the 6m high gable end of the house, necessitating internal scaffolding, and has taken a number of weeks. It’s only now that we’re nearly ready to start applying insulating foil to the walls.

We had originally hoped to be ready for underfloor heating and screed by now, so we’re running about a month behind our original estimates, but to be honest with the new Covid lockdown restrictions and Brexit, I’m just happy to be able to be able to make any progress at all.

I’m sure that there will be many more delays to hit us yet. Never was there such a bad time to work on a house build from a building supplies perspective! 🤔

We’re not despondent, though. It can’t be helped and we will do as much as we can within the constraints that we face.

In the meantime, we continue to be awed by the sheer beauty of the landscape around us, and are serenaded by our raven from the old Scots pine as dawn breaks every morning, complaining that it’s time our sorry asses were out of bed.

It really couldn’t be much better.

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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…

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Work boots and packing boxes

We ran out of bread yesterday afternoon, so husband offered to pop into the local Tescos to pick some up.

The last thing I was expecting was for him to come back with a bargain pair of steel-toe capped work boots for me.

He returned and presented me with them with a flourish worthy of a man clutching a large bunch of red roses. Who says romance is dead!

I guess this means that I am going to have to pull my weight on the build, then… 🤔

I secretly love them. I may never take them off.

These have been added to the rapidly growing pile of knee pads, work trousers and power tools that are filling every free space in the house at the moment. This is the reality of a household getting ready to move in just a few weeks time.

Bertie, our ancient but lovely spaniel, has been reduced to sleeping in odd corners wedged between the boxes wherever he can.

I can see that he is perplexed by the erosion of his space, with boxes forming cardboard labyrinths around the house.

Poor dog. At his age he deserves peace and quiet, and a degree of constancy, and all we give him is change..

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Planning for the internals

Now that the exterior of the house is mainly complete, the builders will be finishing on site and handing over to us to make a start on the interior.

We had originally planned for the builders to do everything, but cost estimates quickly became prohibitive once they’d been discussed and confirmed. The build costs rose over 30% above the architects calculation estimates, leaving us with no alternative but to complete the house ourselves. We’d allocated some contingency, but the magnitude of this was beyond what we could absorb.

We are moving up and into the static in a few weeks time so that we can work full time on the build. As two IT people rather than builders, this is going to be a challenge!

The first week will be busy connecting water and power to the caravan and hooking up the gas bottles for heat and cooking so that we’ve got the basics in place. We also need to build steps for easier access, replace some of the flooring, fit a new boiler and give it a quick lick of paint. This will be our home for the forseeable few months and we need it to be warm, dry and comfortable. Only then can we make a start on the house itself.

Then we start with the foil membrane on the inside of the walls for heat retention and moisture control. There is already protective waterproof membrane on the outer walls underneath the cladding, but to ensure that the house is as sealed as possible we need to wrap the inside of the walls too before plasterboarding.

After that, the underfloor heating, screed and MVHR ducting. There’s something that gives me infantile pleasure as part of the generation that grew up with Alien to have ducting in the house… 🙂.

It’s certainly going to be different to our current lives, and I’m just so damned grateful that husband is a practical man who doesn’t seem daunted by what seems to me to be a whole mountain of challenges…

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Of slow cooked stews and power tools


We’re now in the final few weeks of the London house as the October winds blow. We sit listening to the rain and wind blustering through the branches of the crab apple trees that flank the house, commenting ruefully to each other that this is an early trial for the Skye weather.

We’re making lists of what will be packed for storage and what will be needed in the caravan for the duration of the build.

I’m anticipating a cold, wet Highland winter in the caravan and days of hard physical work, something unfamiliar to our soft urban bodies. Not to mention my still recovering replacement bionic knees.

We’re going to ache and I’m sure that exhaustion will hit pretty quickly. Husband will bear the brunt of this as there are things that he can do that I simply can’t, so one of my small contributions will be keeping us fed. Food will be important for both fuelling tired muscles and keeping morale going.


I’m packing my slow cooker so that I can make soups and stews first thing in the morning to come into at the end of the day without too much effort. It’s comforting to come home to the warmth and smell of a lamb hotpot permeating the caravan when you’re tired, cold and wet. We should be able to raise a spoon and some chunks of bread if we have energy for nothing else!


The kitchen in the caravan is also pretty small so I’m trying to condense down what to pack to the most essential items only. Kettle, oven dishes, plates, cutlery, a few good knives etc. I suspect that our food will be basic until we are in the house, and eaten off laps, but that’s fine by us.


Forget the wild fantasies of feasting off venison and salmon in the Highlands – this is going to be lots of simple cooking designed to fill us up and keep us warm. Soups, porridge, stews and dumplings. Hearty fare, albeit with fresh local produce.

Whilst I’m looking at supplies, husband is restocking essential tools for the build. He got rid of a lot of tools when he moved from the North of England, thinking that they’d no longer be needed in London (and having no storage space for them).

Our living room here is gradually filling up with reciprocating saws, drill bits, power screwdrivers, steel capped boots and work trousers.

I hug myself in anticipation. Not long now until we pack up the car with our ancient spaniel and start the long, slow drive up to the island.

It’s all becoming very real… 👍☺️

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Skye Legends

I’ve been reading this wonderful little book over the last weekend, in between sorting out cupboards and packing for the island. I have to confess to more tea and reading than actual packing…

It was written in 1952 by a lady called Otta Swire who loved the island and who collected its folktales as she travelled.

It does a complete circuit of the island, stretching out into each winged peninsula and recording the tales and legends heard in each village. Some of them are Celtic, stretching back into prehistory, some Nordic, some medieval ;- all fascinating.

It’s a fabulously rich source of the most amazing stories, and for those that don’t know the island well, a superb introduction to the differences between the areas. It’s true that the nature, feel and landscape of each of the peninsulas of Skye are all very different, and Otta Swire captures this uniqueness beautifully.

I laughed out loud and ended up recounting several of them to husband at various points over the weekend, always a good sign that I’m enjoying a book.

For me personally it’s important to know something of both the history and the folklore of the area that you live in, and Skye is deeply steeped in both. I think that learning the local lore binds you more closely to the land, gifting you the insight and the experiences that shaped those that lived before you.

Who knew for example that a local lochan was once said to host a magical water horse, that a bay less than a mile away from the croft sports the name “The Bay of the Forsaken Ones” or that the legend surrounding Castle Dunscaith includes the tragic tale of a wife who killed and fed her children to her cruel husband then threw herself to her death onto the rocks from a castle window?

Black cats feature heavily in the local folklore, as do blue men, kilted warriors, strange beasts such as water horses and the walrus….

It’s all part of the magic of this incredible place – dark, brooding, mysterious, sometimes grim, and very close to faery and the otherworld.

Perfect for dark evenings sitting around the fire and tale-telling over a glass or two of the local Talisker.

The best seat by the fire is always reserved for the Story Teller.

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Dribbles from the island

Updates dribble in slowly from the builders like the intermittent drip from a tap.

Not known as the most patient of people, I await them anxiously, counting the days and weeks since the last email. It’s tough being remote from a build project when it’s your very future going up one block at a time.

Updates do come though – not every week, and not always with accompanying photos, but progress is definitely being made.

I believe that the concrete has been poured onto the foundation slab and that the builders are ready to start erecting the SIP panels next week. They’ve advised that the panels normally take about three weeks to complete.

After that the roof slates go on, then the larch cladding for the walls. By the time we visit in September we’ll definitely have the semblance of a house to see, even if it’s just the exterior shell.

It’s going to be an emotional moment.