All quiet on the ‘home front’ :-(

Well it’s been a while hey, sure these posts seem to be getting further apart and more disjointed these days. Truth is, ‘yours truly’ is steering gradually towards drawing his pension and has definitely started being a little less manic. Indeed the ‘grumpy old fart’ has even started watching TV!!!, I kid you not, these days I seem to draw more satisfaction from sitting on George our hand made sofa and watching the ‘one eyed monster’ than plinking away on a keyboard glued to my laptop. Sure we paid more for George than I’ve ever paid for a car but I’m hoping he’ll last much longer and not need either road tax or an MOT. I draw the line at soaps, reality TV, Simon friggin’ Cowell and anything on Channel 5 right enough but I do enjoy a good drama or something that doesn’t involve a prostitute being murdered in the first episode.

Still, I’ve actually been without a TV for a good part of my adult life and when I did watch it in earnest there were only 3 channels, no day time TV and a ‘test card’ for longer than any actual programmes

I even remember getting mildly excited in the late sixties when it was upgraded to this one.

I was only 10 at the time and thought she was a bit of a babe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carole_Hersee

It’s just not the same

I guess part of it too is not having the ‘boy’ around, not that he was at home much or actually said a lot anyway. Ross left home when he was 11 really when he went off to high school, but it is strange not having him about the place at the weekends. Still, he does seem to be enjoying life at ‘Uni’ I bet he’s not watching TV, do any children watch it these days? I know it’s the age of the mobile phone, video games and social media but I don’t recall Ross ever watching anything other than ‘The big bang theory’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Bang_Theory . I just found it annoying but perhaps that’s why he’s so good at physics

Raasay Distillery is officially open

Anyway, enough of that I’ll try and update you with the news, which in reality means looking back through old photo’s in my camera cos my memory is carp  

Of course the big, big news is the distillery is officially open and working, though not actually quite finished yet.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-41284423

https://scotchwhisky.com/magazine/latest-news/16035/isle-of-raasay-distillery-starts-production/

https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/tag/isle-of-raasay-distillery/

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/island-of-raasay-celebrates-opening-of-first-whisky-distillery-7clgqjcsk

I’ll let the hacks of more reputable publications describe that to you, me I was working so missed the party, which by all accounts was pretty damn good

Sorry, that was just a random party on the Hallaig’s car deck a few days before Methinks it was a wedding at Raasay house, whatever it was they were having a jolly old time of it

   

Here is the real party starting with the Isle of Skye pipe band who piped both on and off the good ship Hallaig much to the amusement of the passengers aboard. They also received an enthusiastic welcome on Raasay prior to marching the short distance to the newly converted hotel.

 

The newly laid ‘stripy’ lawn looking, well, very stripy This is just gonna look boodly amazing next summer, looks pretty good now right enough compared to what it did only a week previously.

The various contractors ‘pulling out all the stops’ to make the day a success.

   

Some 13 tar lorries arriving over a two day period to get the car park and access road ‘fit for service’, not to mention keeping the crew of Hallaig ‘on their toes’

 

A trio of Scania’s from Mackenzie & MacLennan, Eyre Plant, A Macleod and Alec Beaton’s DAF making several trips to and from the Sconser quarry tar plant.

 

The many and varied guests arriving sometimes by more exotic transport than the Hallaig

 

The Midnight Rose and Dignity making Raasay look a little more like Monaco for a day or two at least.

 

The local fishing boat Lustre moving to her mooring for the festivities  

The fine Astandoa 70 being available for charter from her owners in Barra http://www.hebrideanprestigecruise.co.uk/ One of whom I sailed with aboard MV Finlaggan some year s ago, not that he’ll remember

The rainbows and skate

One thing about all the rain we’ve had,

 

there’s been no shortage of rainbows.

There’s been an abundance of porpoises too, as well as a rather large skate that was swimming on the surface.

 

Dunno if it was sick or confused but it must have been a good metre ‘wingspan’ and it was flapping about both upside down and the right way up before disappearing into the depths.

I know, I know, it’s pretty rubbish, you had to be there

Meanwhile ‘back at the ranch’ I’ve been concreting, ‘digging and dumping’, fencing and preparing moorings for next year.

 

This is a 4 strand 24mm ‘Sea steel’ rope that I’ve had tucked away in my barn for years. They don’t seem to sell it any more and I was never really sure of its advantage over a 3 strand rope. However with a steel ‘tube eye’ and good size swivel it’s eminently suitable for what I require. The rope is spliced just like a 3 strand apart from peeling the 5th inner core right back then folding three strands instead of two one way and the last strand the opposite way. You know if you have it right if you look at it upside down after the first tuck, you should see ‘one over, one under’ all the way around. I guess you would do four tucks instead of three to be ‘kosher’ but I never left the tails long enough so left it at three.

IT will be just fine, I’ll do four on the next one

Yamaha 350 Bruin rear shocker

My mate’s 2007 Yamaha YFM350 Bruin celebrates a decade of hard work this year so I thought I’d treat it to a new rear shocker and handbrake cable.

This quad has done some serious work over last ten years, you only have to read this blog to realize how many tons of coal, oil, rock, pigs, furniture, building materials, fencing stuff, hydro turbine pipe and batteries it has shifted over the years. In all that abuse it has had little more than batteries, oil, tyres, brake pads, starter brushes, track rod ends, steering bushes and one or two electrical faults. It has had less money spent on it in ten years than a Quadzilla I know had in ten months. However the rear shocker failed recently, luckily quality ‘pattern’ ones are available for a fraction of a genuine one and they’re a piece of cake to change. Just jack up the quad under the frame until the rear wheels are just about to lift off the ground, remove the lower split pin and clevis. Lots of WD40 beforehand helps, once that’s out remove the top nut and bolt then replace the unit with lots of grease on everything. The cable is even easier, just cut through all the ‘tie wraps’ holding it to the frame, remove the clevis off the brake handle, undo the wing nut off the rear brake, tape the new cable to the old one then carefully pull it through. After that just connect everything up and adjust it, simples

In the airport

So that’s it really, I’m stuck in the Holiday Inn at Glasgow airport having just completed my five yearly update of ‘Personal Survival Technique’s’ and now know how to do sea water colonic irrigation with a life raft foot pump. Tomorrow it’ll be a fire fighting update, hopefully I’ll not be going into a dark steel container and set on fire like what happened to me in Hull some years ago. That was real scary sh1t and I came away with singed ears and a healthy respect for fire prevention

Off to uni :-)

Well, that’s the end of a manic weekend and back to the calm of the kitchen table, the grey mist shrouding the Storr and more pishing rain. Our son deposited at Heriot Watt university and just the wife, dug and myself for company. Sure it’ll be nice not tripping over his size 10 riggers boots at the door, the food bills will plummet and the thermal store temperature remain more stable When I go for a shower the temperature at the top of the 1500lt TS drops by a mere 2 degrees Celsius, my son can drop it by 10 degrees during his endless watering in the bathroom Gonna really miss him around the croft right enough and most of my serious diving projects will now be on hold until he or A N Other returns. But that is it, another chapter in ‘the book of life’ begins, on Saturday we drove him down to Edinburgh for the start of ‘fresher’s week’.

He checked in at reception,

let us help him carry his stuff into the hall and that was about it really, he couldn’t wait to see the back of us

We did stay overnight right enough, in a lovely room on campus, which with a double king size bed and all the ‘mod cons’ was better than most hotels I’ve stayed in. After a good  night’s sleep we killed time until the 9:00am breakfast by walking around the immense and well kept grounds.

   

The university in on the site of what was once a large stately home and it’s estate.

Riccarton Estate

The earliest recorded reference to Riccarton or Richardstoun is from 1315 when King Robert the Bruce bestowed the land as a dowry on his daughter Marjory. In 1480 the Wardlaw family held the lands and by 1508 they had been leased to the Hepburn family. Lawyer Sir Thomas Craig bought the estate in 1605 and throughout the 17^th century added much of the surrounding lands including Hermiston.

The beautiful landscaped parkland was first developed in the late 18^th century by Thomas Craig  who enclosed much of the land, and then by Sir James and Sir William Gibson-Craig. Both were avid collectors of plants and introduced the "sunken" part of the lawn which was a curling pond. The house was extended in the 1820s to create an elegant mansion. Sadly, two sons then died in the Boer and First World Wars and the title and lands were split, the estate passing through the female line to the Sudlow family. The house was commandeered by the Army in 1939, becoming the headquarters for the liberation of Norway and after the war a resettlement camp for ex-Prisoners of War and from 1947 to 1954 the headquarters for the Royal Artillery’s 3^rd Anti Aircraft Group. The house by this point was in quite state of disrepair and was demolished in 1956.

Midlothian County Council acquired and gifted the estate to the University in 1969. Although the house has now gone, many original buildings remain such as the lodges, Gardner’s Cottage and Hermiston House. https://www.hw.ac.uk/services/heritage-information-governance/history/edinburgh/riccarton-estate.htm

The grounds are full of wildlife

 

with just a few clues as to its past life like the old ice house above.

After breakfast we headed home and caught a busy 17:00 ferry back to Raasay, your truly did try to post last night but was in his bed just after 20:00. I just can’t cope with all the stress of modern life these days

Where would you be without a digger

The day before heading sowf was spent spreading 20mm ‘chuckies’ at the front of the house, though first we called in to see me Mam. It would be the last chance in a while that my son would be seeing her and we’d not have time on Saturday.

 

I just love quarries and always have spent much of my yoof exploring them in the Lake District and Wales, latterly diving in many flooded ones. So I’m always happy visiting the one at Sconser, sad or what

  

Now the last time I spread these 20mm chips around the house I dumped them round the back and barrowed them round the front. It’s no wonder I’ve a bad back, well those days are long gone, this time I used Calum the Kubota

Much easier