Catching up

It’s been a while since I was on here so it’ll probably be a little mixed up disjointed and inaccurate, so nothing fresh there then 🙂 I had promised a review of the Mull Little Theatre’s http://www.mulltheatre.com/shows_singing.html production of ‘Singing far into the night’ but that never happened.

Despite a busy day at work of hydraulics, rainbows and trucks I was all revved up for going, after all it was my last day at work so the 5:30 start wasn’t mandatory.

 

 

The day started off as usual around 7:15 down at our new harbour and despite not being a fan of clam dredgers it was good to see the new pier being used by some other traffic.

 

It was a fine enough day with just the odd shower to produce a splash of colour amongst the autumn hues.

 

 

This immaculate DAF truck belonging to Mark Duncan was over with more roofing timbers for the new School Park houses. My relief turned up at 17:35 and I rushed home to feed the pigs and get changed, or so I thought. Not even through the croft gate when I met my neighbour who informed me that we had a very sick sheep nearby.

It was one of our Soay ewes that had been missing for a couple of weeks and she’d found it near her chalet very weak, injured and surrounded by pigs! She’d managed to disperse the pigs and tether the ewe to a tree but filled with adrenalin or the sheep equivalent the sick Soay had bolted when she spotted the rest of the flock.

After an hour of the entire population of Raasay’s north end (all five of us 🙂 ) sprackling about in the darkened birch woods we gave up. It was almost 20:00, the play would almost be starting and I was in no mood for getting changed and driving 11 miles to see it 😦

Wednesday

After an early night then feeding the herd and remainder of the flock wifey and I set off out on a beautiful morning to search for the ewe. Two hours later we gave up after finding nothing more than a few winter chanterelles.

 

I had business in Portree to attend to but wifey, the Dude and his pal who’s cycled up from the south end continued the fruitless search.

She must be well hidden, for an animal in such a state would normally attract crows if at all visible, and of them there was no sign either. Many is the still living sheep that I’ve seen with its eyes or belly plucked out by these vile creatures.

  Arriving home just after 16:00 we wasted no more time on what was most certainly by now a dead ewe and got on with the hydro turbine pipe. We had a couple of hours daylight to play with but managed to get the pipe re routed through the trench that we’d dug on my last ‘rest week’.

The trench had reduced the height of the siphon by around half from 2m to 1m and the new route had the bonus of being some 15m shorter. So with the first two sections of pipe connected we primed it with the pump and headed home for dinner leaving the siphon running.

Thursday

Another fine day greeted us, as did a still running and air free siphon on the heather below the loch as we headed over there after breakfast. The plan was to connect all the pipe work back up and fit valves at the dubious high spots. The smaller humps could be dealt with later using just a small drill and stainless screw for now but before investing in more saddles and valves I wanted to try it out in principle.

 

These saddle clamps http://www.pipestock.com/saddles-clamps/reinforced-single-outlet/ are a cheap and easy way of breaking into the pipe without cutting it. This is the first one going in at the high point within the trench.

The second one went in a couple of hundred meters away at a high spot just before the pipe dips into a small valley.

Though not before I got soaked by some water that was still lying in the pipe, much to my workers amusement 🙂

The next one we fitted at the last high point in the line, which was where I was unsure of its altitude relative to the loch.

Molly the ‘wee dug’ wasn’t so sure either 🙂 An excessive hump here would have meant a double siphon and double headache. I’d consulted the map with a magnifying glass, tried a GPS and even worn my lucky underpants but come to no firm conclusions. The only way was to fit a vacuum/pressure gauge.

Anyway with three of my four saddles fitted and time pressing we went back to the loch and fired up the priming pump.

Shutting each valve off as the air ceased to escape,

 

once all the air was out we stopped the pump, went over to the last and most dubious hump and fitted a gauge.

To my surprise and delight this turned out to be reading just over 10 psi of head with the pipe flowing at around 3lts/sec. From memory (so probably way out) each psi is around 2.22feet of head so still a good 7m below the level of the loch 🙂 It is far far easier to get air lochs out of a pipe under positive pressure than negative, the upshot of this being that the only but of the penstock under negative pressure is the first hump 🙂 That only being a small one can I’m sure be overcome with a little ingenuity and of course the internet 🙂 I’m not there yet but would have never got this far without the help of peeps from the US, Canada and Australia on  http://fieldlines.com/board/index.php more local advice from http://www.navitron.org.uk/forum/index.php and of course from Hugh Piggott himself at http://scoraigwind.com/ the supplier of pretty much all my wind and hydro turbines.

Leaving that reluctantly behind we all headed south in the Land Rover to deposit my boys pal and his bike at home. After cycling all the way up ‘Calum’s road’ I could hardly make home ride home after all the effort he’d put in 🙂

It wasn’t just the north end that was busy, the dry weather had the crofters out in force finishing off their silage in the Oskaig parks.

As well as builders forging ahead on the new School Park houses.

 

Friday

Today was a morning of dreaded paperwork followed by worming piglets and getting them loaded up for a trip to Skye.

 

As you can see, they are very stressed 🙂

We arrived an hour early for the ferry as we had to meet another one of my slaves, sorry, my sons friends 🙂 which was just as well for we were in time to witness this.

 

The departure of the 11:55 from Glame on one of  http://www.hhhltd.co.uk/ articulated lorries 🙂 For many years this landmark has been the North Raasay Sheep Sock Club’s tea hut. After spending much of its life on routes in the Outer Isles this venerable old coach was converted to a camper van before finding its final resting place on the high moors opposite Portree.

 

If it doesn’t get melted down for scrap it should give years of fun to anyone dedicated or daft enough to restore it 🙂

Ending on a sad note

It was whilst awaiting the ferry that I heard the sad news that Shelagh Taylor died yesterday in Raigmore hospital after a short but fierce and complicated battle with kidney cancer.

A native of Raasay she returned from America a few of years ago and was the happy face at Balfour Beatty for a couple of years. If you worked at or visited the harbour construction site it was Shelagh’s smile that greeted you. A regular visitor and commentator on the blog she often ‘put me right’ and filled in some gaps in local history.

Shortly after being diagnosed she set up this ‘Just giving’ page  http://www.justgiving.com/Shelagh-Taylor

 

Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page and a big thank you to all who have donated so far.

As most of you will know, I was diagnosed with kidney cancer December 14th 2010 & had a radical nephrectomy performed on February 7th 2011.  Whilst waiting for my surgery I empowered myself with as much information about my cancer as I could.  What I found was the lack of awareness of this type of cancer and lack of funding for new medicines that can help stop the spread or give increased quality of life.  I am lucky – I was told that all of the tumour (Clear Cell Renal Carcinoma or RCC) had been removed and the surgeon was confident that he had "got it all".  I will have to have 6 monthly follow up CT scans etc. to make sure the cancer has not metastised so the worry will always be there.

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity and make sure Gift Aid is reclaimed on every eligible donation by a UK taxpayer. So it’s the most efficient way to donate – I raise more, whilst saving time and cutting costs for the charity.

So please dig deep and donate now.

Donating will not not bring her back or ease the pain and suffering of her relatives and many friends but it may help others in the future.