Well the hangover was not so bad as it turned out, mainly because good sense prevailed and we never opened a 2nd bottle. Just as well because we decided to take a trip into Portree as the forecast was pretty poor UK Wind Map said force 6 westerly with heavy showers. As that strength and direction would not put the ferry off but would make fencing (my chosen task) unpleasent we headed for the 9:00am ferry after dropping the dude off at school.
This is what it looked like over towards Scalpay whilst we were waiting in the ferry queue.
A little bit of the ‘wild west’
Our main purpose for the trip to Skye was to get fencing materials and feed, however upon arrival at our most friendly and helpfull ‘Harbro’ agricultural merchants we were told the delivery wasn’t in yet. Having a couple of hours to kill we set off for Dunvegan to buy ammo for my .22 and the dudes air rifle.
I have to say I hate all the war, military, macho sabre rattling stuff that governments get up to. I was all in favour of the ban on hand guns and I think the law on air weapons needs tightening up but I do love looking around this shop. I spent a month in Colorado and Utah once and there are more shops like this than there are gas stations which is a scary thought. The only difference being all those guns in the picture are deactivated whereas in the US they’re not!!! even scarier was the supermarkets sold ammunition in the aisles!! I kid you not, I went into a supermarket in Colorado springs and one whole aisle was devoted to ammo of all types and calibers and they weren’t particular about who they sold it to, I filled a trolley (they call them carts) with ammo, hundreds of rounds of all different calibers, even some for an AK47 and paid for it on my Scottish visa card without any ID!! though I had to laugh, on the end of the aisle was a sign ‘hand gun ammunition will not be sold to minors’ so I suppose it must have been ok for them to buy rifle ammo! In case your wondering what I was doing with all these munitions well I was staying with some good ‘redneck’ friends who had a cabin in the wilds and a ton of guns (when in Rome). On a more sombre note Columbine High was not that far away and this was not that long before that fatal day.
Back to Raasay
After our visit to survivalists heaven we got the required materials from ‘Harbro’ bought 3 apple trees one plum and a pear tree from ‘Skye shrubs’ though we could not squeeze them in the ‘old girl’ along with the 30 fence post, 1 roll of barbed wire, 1 roll of ‘ryloc’, 10 bags of pig feed, 25k of peanuts, 20k wild bird feed, 1 bag of hen feed etc etc. In fact we really struggled to squeeze in the sister in law who met us at Sconser. By the time we arrived on Raasay it was hardly worth going home as the dude would be out of school in just over an hour so I went in search of grumpy digger driver.
And here he was (minus archeaologist) busy leveling the site for the workers accomadation. Nice view and close to the ‘Isle of Raasay hotel’! as we were pointing towards the cemetry with the ‘old girl’ we continued upwards to check out the new extension there.
31 years without a photo
There’s been a van traveling back and forwards on the ferry of late and I’ve kept seeing it at the side of the road and the three chaps carefully selecting rocks from the verges (we have no shortage of rock here). Me being somewhat obsessed by stones and the like stopped my painting on the ferry and asked them one morning what they were up to ‘making a wall at the cemetry said the man’. He went on to tell me they did allot of cemetry work, fencing, walls and the like. After which he went at great lengths to describe to me a painting job they once did on the hydro scheme at the ‘Storr lochs’ on Skye, being one of the few people that can actually see this hydro scheme and being interested in all things renewable I was rivited by his description of painting the huge steel penstock pipes that run down to the turbine house. After his graphic account of the various primers and paints used I says ‘when was that then’ (expecting him to say last year or something) 1974 was his reply! So having a bit of time to spare off we went to check out the wall.
It really is a work of art and I must get a better picture, I did ask the hydro painter on the left if it was ok to take a photo. ‘Aye he says, I once had my photo taken before’ when was that I asked ‘1977 he says, it was building a wall at Carbost, it was taken for the Press and Journal and went in the paper’ well there’ll be people seeing you from Australia to America tonight I replied.
