Back end of the year

After weeks of dodging rain showers as we tried to focus on jobs around the garden, enduring the frustration of starting one job then rushing inside to avoid getting soaked, suddenly it has dried out. Cloud covers the sky and the wind blows as before but nothing falls on us. Bravely we venture outside, where we stay until late in the day, wearing ourselves out with all the vegetation wrestling. I acquire a battery powered hedge trimmer which I find makes cutting back the shrubs a lot easier and given the mountainous nature of our front garden I decide to call this my cliff edge trimmer. As a result of all our hard work some parts of the garden are even starting to acquire a 'cared for' look they haven't had for many years.

Then suddenly winter arrives. (Nobody saw that coming!) Something we know as the Jetstream decides to do an unusual wriggle, the result of which is to pour cold northerly winds over Britain. Then, since said Jetstream apparently finds this rather pleasant, it maintains this for weeks on end. It makes us reach for our warm underwear, put on thick socks, wrap scarves around our necks, and that  before we even think about going outside. Our garden has turned white with frost and walking about on what was previously sodden grass is suddenly like walking on concrete. Gardening in the conventional sense has become impossible but since there is now an enormous heap of plant matter which was dry enough to be processed in some way, turned into something usable perhaps, this calls for a new strategy.

The next phase of our existence makes use of the limited hours between the sun rising high enough over the hills opposite for its rays to make their way through our windows, giving us the motivation for venturing out, and the early afternoon when the same star disappears in the west for the day and the thermometer creeps below zero again. For me this involves dressing up in multiple layers, over which goes my boiler suit and then a fleecy work jacket, a close fitting hat and my Wellington boots, the latter not so much to keep out water but to keep in the warmth. Thick leather gloves complete this outfit, protection from both the cold and the thorns I am destined to do battle with. Dressed like this I go to war with the plant heap, the aim being to convert it into something of value, maybe something to keep us warm. Hidden in this heap are the branches of long lost trees which once grew in our garden which had previously been thrown over our rear boundary and piled up, threatening the stability of the fence itself. But this is wood, and once the smaller twigs are removed we are left with logs that when cut up and left to dry out, we can burn as fuel to heat the house. The trimmings from our various overgrown garden shrubs meet a different end. These are turned into 'shreddies' by passing them through a garden mincing machine (one of two we now possess) and then spread over our newly cleared areas as a top dressing. And the best part of all this activity is that it keeps me warm in the biting cold outside, a warmth that lasts all day.

The bitter cold does bring something with it, of course - sunshine. Solstice is only days away but just before 10am each day the sun pops up over the hill opposite and blasts down from a cloudless sky all day. It has little effect on the temperature outside but in our south facing conservatory, surrounded on all sides by glass, the temperature rises steadily until it becomes warmer in there than in the house itself. This is an unexpected bonus for us. We can only imagine how hot this is going to become in the summer months. Perhaps a small sauna is appropriate.

The winter solstice arrives. From now onwards the days get longer, starting with sunset happening later each day. At 47 minutes past 9 pm Greenwich Mean Time on 21st December 2022, at this precise moment in the day, the tilt in the earth's axis reverses so that the length of each day grows. Thank goodness for this wobble, without which life as we know it would not exist.

One person who must know all about this is Santa Claus but despite this he comes early, with flashing lights from the fire engine which accompanies him as he rides past our house and several blasts from the siren as we wave at him. We are honoured to be blessed with his visit and very excited to see him.

House plans

There are a couple of expressions people might use after moving home and looking around the house properly for the first time. We might say we want to 'make it ours' or alternatively we might want to 'put our mark on it'. Either of these expressions could mean almost anything from putting your own pictures up on the wall, new lamp shades, or entire decor changes in every room but in essence what we mean is that what was to the taste of previous owners is not to ours. Just putting in our own furniture, replacing what has been taken away, doesn't quite give us what we want so something more fundamental has to change to meet our desires... and this requires making plans.

In the Grand Designs TV programme the format at this point is for the presenter to pour doubt upon the ideas some rather embarrassed family has for a barren plot of land they have acquired and to raise his eyebrows when told their proposed budget. 'How much! And how long do you expect this to take?' Of course on TV by the end of the show it is all smiles and happiness as we are shown around the colossus of a house with its custom built staircase and vast areas of glass looking out into a perfectly landscaped garden, evidence that the project has turned out well after all and is fully in keeping with the owners' original plans (although maybe somewhat over the original budget).

So now to reality. We are not building anything from scratch but there is, nevertheless, much that we would wish to change about the house we have just bought and moved into, probably going far beyond 'putting a mark on it' if the truth is to be told. Take the kitchen, for instance. It needs more worktop space and it would also be nice to have cupboards with shelves that are within arm's reach and not nudging the ceiling and needing steps to reach them. The gas cooker might look ok but it is far from perfect. The oven doesn't cook pizza properly, pies need defrosting first to have any chance of cooking and the grill is pretty hopeless. Then there's that tap over the sink that the kettle won't fit under - whatever were they thinking - and the kitchen power points all seem to be in the wrong place. The lack of an extractor fan also means that as soon as cooking starts the whole house knows what is coming by the smell.

Moving on to the bathroom, the tiny shower cubicle gave me claustrophobia as I bumped my elbows on the sides and it was squeezed into a small room which already has a bath with a shower attachment. The shower screen was the first thing to be ripped out (we have another en suite shower in the house that we can use). We have always found a spacious walk-in shower ticks most of our boxes and we have lived in a house without a bath for the last 10 years.

Fortunately since this is not the first time in our lives we have moved house and redesigned rooms to 'make them ours' I am equipped with the technology to produce scaled plans that I can view in 3D so we can visualise our ideas. Shown here is bathroom version 4, one that will involve a toilet relocation and a new shower tray and screen. The electric power-shower has gone, replaced by one fed with both hot and cold water, which seems to make more sense to us.

Whilst I can manage the destructive bits, stripping the walls and ceiling, for the plumbing side of this project and particularly in relation to the toilet, what we need now is a nice plumber to install and connect up all the difficult bits leaving me to redecorate afterwards. The polystyrene tiles have come off the ceiling (something that revealed a long crack in the plasterboard above) and we now have some nice shiny pvc panels up there. Our favourite plumber is lined up to do the rest.

These two rooms, kitchen and bathroom, are the priority for us although we are conscious of wanting to do so much more to the house to really make it ours, ultimately to change the decor in every room, a massive undertaking perhaps, but we're talking about longer term plans here, no rush. 

Meanwhile there are other things that will soon start going on outside the house, big changes that will keep us warm for years to come. Insulation all around, wrapping the house up in a blanket to keep us cosy.

Bramble extraction [✓]

The longest and most challenging of the tasks on our ToDo list is finally ticked. Job done! That is not to say that there is no single piece of bramble left on our land - far from it. But we have now clambered over every inch, gone into every corner, fought our way along each boundary fence and dived down beneath each clump of dense, overgrown plant life to find and cut off those stems as close to the ground as possible. Once having pulled those long strands out from their tangled home we have created a massive pile of vegetation in the rear garden which one day, perhaps, when it has dried out, we will set fire to. The brambles will regrow, we know this as the roots are still in the ground, but at least we'll be ready for them when they do. 

It has been hard work, very physical, and quite satisfying to get as far as we have. Sadly though such a thorough exploration of the garden has revealed something else, something we did not expect and which we find quite offensive. 

Whoever had responsibility for this garden in the past seemed to think it appropriate to throw things away, to dump stuff there, mostly amongst the denser growths of vegetation so that it would be hidden in the shrubbery or the long grass. The bramble invasion ensured that once lost from sight these items stayed that way and would still be hidden today had we not bought the house. The latest discovery, buried beneath the grass, is another Jewson's bag, a bulky sack used to deliver sand or gravel to your home. These things are made to last, a tough nylon mesh with four handles for lifting the immense weight as it is craned off the lorry. They are indestructible by any normal standard and will certainly not biodegrade by being buried in the soil. However this is the third bag we have pulled from the ground since we moved in a month ago, along with plastic bags, glass bottles, lumps of iron fencing, plasterboard, some sheets of corrugated asbestos, broken flower pots and a host of other things. One of the Jewson's bags was full of tiny pieces of broken glass, too heavy to move until some of it was shoveled out. This goes way beyond a lack of care for the garden. It is as if someone has deliberately thrown these items away, guiltily hiding them perhaps, instead of disposing of them properly.

On the positive side, during all our outdoor work, carried out in between the rain showers, we have had a small companion.

He will fly down almost as soon as we start work somewhere and stare at us from almost beneath our feet, hopping about looking for any insects or worms to feed on. He is a robin, but one with almost no fear of humans. We call him Rob and rather obligingly he has let me take his picture. He's a real charmer.

Mahonia

Mahonia is a large genus of woody evergreen shrubs named by British botanist Thomas Nuttall to honour Bernard McMahon, a colonial nurseryman from Philadelphia who was Thomas Jefferson's gardening mentor. It is also one of the many gifts left to us by the previous owners of our new house.

Like others in the Berberidaceae order this plant has shiny leaves which are spiky, rather like holly, and we have several massive bushes in our garden which have not been pruned or cut back for many years. Pruning them, however, means braving not just the spikyness of their leaves but also another invader which hides itself in an impossible-to-reach spot amongst the cluster of stems at ground level. The green stems from this plant rise up within the bush until they reach the daylight nearly three metres above then continue growing to drape themselves downwards around those spiky leaves until eventually they reach the ground again. Here they grow into the long uncut grass surrounding the tree where sooner or later they will decide it is time to send out new roots into the soil. By this time their spiky stems have grown to some six or seven metres. No amount of pulling on the exposed stems will break them; they are strong. Only by cutting off the stems from within the bush can they be removed, torn away with with every ounce of strength as each spike tries to hold on for its life. But to do this you must get inside the bush, braving those spiky mahonia leaves again. I am, of course, referring to bramble, often named after its fruit, the blackberry.

Suitably protected by my boiler suit, with thick leather gloves tightly fastened on each hand and armed with some long handled loppers I attack the shrub from the outside first, nipping off each cluster of leaves until I can see deeper in to where the bramble is hiding. I am ruthless, this is not an exercise in prettiness. The aim here is to reduce the whole thing to a size which enables us to walk around this part of the garden.

I soon notice, however, something quite surprising. The flesh inside a mahonia branch is bright yellow, thicker stems also having an internal ring of white with more yellow inside that. This takes me by surprise as I apologise to the plant for any harm I might be causing. Then eventually I can see the bramble stems deep inside rising from the ground and I push the loppers in to cut them off as close as possible to the ground.

I have nothing personal against the bramble (I would be the first to eat jam made from its fruit) but we have just bought a house with a garden completely overrun by this plant, to such an extent that normal gardening cannot even begin until the long trailing stems are cut out. By their nature the strength of those stems and the roots that feed them is quite remarkable, impressively so. Human strength alone will not break them. Instead each stem must be traced across the ground or through whatever plant it has invaded until it disappears into the soil where it can be cut so that the whole stem can then be ripped free. Inevitably during the process of doing this the spikes will find your flesh, usually the wrists, but eyes and ears are equally vulnerable unless great care is taken. So far we have filled our trailer three times with bramble stems, each time jumping on the load to squash it flat before taking it to the local tip. Then, realising the futility of wasting fuel by driving, we began to pile the material up in the garden, awaiting the next dry spell when we will have a massive bonfire.

Changing the subject a little...I believe I may have mentioned before the 'stuff' we have been (un)fortunate enough to have purchased along with our new house. The quantity of garden tools alone, particularly small trowels and forks stashed in both sheds, in the greenhouse, or just lying about in the garden, is hard to comprehend. Someone who once lived here clearly had a fetish about nails and screws too. These come in all sizes and are invariably in little packets, carefully wrapped then placed in larger bags or boxes or rusted tins. The space beneath the house (we call this the understory although this normally refers to the area beneath a woodland tree canopy) is the best place to find screws although on each visit down there something else is discovered. There was a considerable collection of long playing records, most of which date back to the 1960s and were welcomed in our local charity shop, an elderly knitting machine, a wooden table and two benches lay dismantled alongside a box of hinges and a bagged up gazebo. It is clear from the layer of dust that none of these items have been touched for years; they were forgotten long before the last owner chose to forget to take them away when she moved out.

A tasteful cluster of tiny drawers was fixed to the wall high up in a kitchen cupboard, not the sort of place where one might expect to keep a ragged assortment of screws, small electrical bits, hooks, tiny nuts and bolts, a random collection of washers, assorted nails, plastic wall plugs and 11p in coin (that is if you ignore the Belgian francs). The sheer randomness of each little drawer's contents speaks volumes about the mind of the person who put together this collection, a level of disorderliness to which I can only aspire. Indeed it has made me recognise one aspect of my own make up which results in my recoiling in horror when faced with having to deal with something like this, casting over 90% of what is before me into the rubbish bin. Each item was clearly manufactured with a particular purpose in mind, a destination which it should have shared with others of its kind or indeed a role which it might have uniquely held for many years. All that is now lost.

But I have gone on long enough here about the discoveries in and around our new home and since for some days rain has discouraged further play out in the wilder areas of our garden we now indulge in some indoor relaxation by planning how we might change the inside spaces to suit our tastes. Lots of thinking and months of decorating lie ahead.

Moving in and on

We turn the key and the door to our new home opens smoothly. Some might be tempted to go for the over-the-threshold carry but we have already agreed to go for a threshold rollover instead, purely for health and safety reasons. Finally we are inside and look around. It is all ours, warts and all.

It is, in fact, only the second time we have stepped inside the property, this despite various requests for another viewing and a lengthening list of things to check or measure. Can we look inside the shed(s)? What are the house carpets like? (Who thinks to stare at your feet when you are being shown around by the charming resident owner, a lady who offers us coffee and a plate of biscuits.) Is there a space in the kitchen for our dishwasher? Can we take a peek in the attic? Will our Martin fit in the garage? (Actually we discovered the answer to this one by a sneaky drive past and rapid deployment of a tape measure. The answer is... not without some modifications to the garage roof.)

When it came to collecting the keys to our new home, and given that the estate agent's office is twenty miles further on down the road, we asked if the keys could be left somewhere nearer, with a neighbour perhaps. We'd almost lost hope of avoiding the forty mile round trip when word finally reached us that the keys would be left for us to collect, in the village post office.

Then another call came in, this time from our removers, saying that they were at that moment emptying the house we are buying of its contents and, because no packing had been done in advance, this was taking far longer than planned. Would we mind some stuff being left behind in one room until our moving in, four days later? This we agreed to, for the sake of the sanity of the removers, but little doubts were beginning to sink in.

We were, therefore, beginning to feel a little more apprehensive than we might have been. For the last seven weeks we had been asking ourselves whether we had missed anything, whether our memories of that all too brief viewing were accurate and more particularly, should we have lifted at least a few carpets or peered into a cupboard or two before we made our offer. Looking back it seems like a mad gamble - not the sort of behaviour we undertake routinely - and our sensible selves are shouting back at us, telling us off. Then, added to this, we would be moving into a house which still has property of the previous owner inside, something any solicitor will tell you is a no-no. It can lead to chaos. It relies on trust, which the solicitor never recognises as existing. In the real world, however, trust does exist, hence our acquiescence to this arrangement. But is it misplaced?

Then it got worse. Midway through the very day we are supposed to be collecting those keys and getting access to our new home, crossing the threshold, we hear the owner has not moved out and has yet to sign the necessary papers transferring ownership. We are now getting frantic. Calls to the estate agent and to our solicitor take place with little joy. It is a Friday and nobody works at weekends, of course. We have packed almost everything, disconnected our appliances and our removers are booked for the following Monday. Do we have to cancel this? We pace around our box-filled house like people possessed.

The weekend passes with no communications from anyone, our blood pressures are rising steadily as we know that at 9am on Monday a team of removers will start loading our belongings into vans but we have nowhere for them to go, no house to move into. By 11am the first van is loaded. Then, finally, at 11.30 the call comes. We have a house (something that should have happened three days earlier) and we can now collect the keys. We all hit the road early afternoon then climb the steps to our new front door an hour or so later.

Our vendor has indeed left belongings in one bedroom - it was full to the ceiling - but she had neglected to mention that neither of the sheds had been emptied, nor the space beneath the house. Odd items of her property are scattered everywhere indoors, left behind as she moved on.

Oh, and this is what we missed underfoot.

Our team of removers did their best, emptying the bedroom and then taking away two lawnmowers, but this left a long list of items (nothing of particular value) for us to deal with. When you buy a house, unless agreed otherwise everything within it becomes yours, which means you can dispose of it as you choose. But why should we have to?

All this additional hassle and stress we could have done without; any sympathy we had for the previous owner evaporated from the moment she began to mess us around by delaying the sale. But we now put behind us the distain with which we have been treated by the seller and we move on. The new house is just what we need and we love the location. There is much about the house we want to change (starting with those carpets) to make it ours but we shall enjoy the big project that lies ahead.

Packing and moving house

There must be a simple mathematical formula associated with living in a house for any length of time, expressed as a relationship between the number of years occupancy relative to the amount of accumulated 'stuff' stored therein. No amount of careful hoarding-avoidance changes this. It is an inescapable fact of life itself, part of the human condition that remains hidden from view until moving day arrives when everything you own has to be packed into boxes.

Boxes, boxes and more boxes. We have more on order and cannot wait for them to arrive so we can start filling them.

The whole process of moving house, selling one place and buying another, has its own timetable, one that runs at different speeds from one end to the other. Here in Scotland an up front Home Report is the seller's responsibility so the sale starts slowly, visits by the estate agent then a surveyor. These are busy people, so they always insist. After they have seen all they need to see, asked those important questions and taken those carefully stage-managed photos time slows down as you wait for their efforts to manifest themselves; your approval of their expert preparatory work is needed before the process can continue. Finally our house is out there, pictured in glorious colour, online for all to see - the modern way - and displayed in a high street window - the old fashioned way. The next day we get a call for our first viewing, as if someone was just sitting there waiting. This is soon followed by another. I check to see if there is a queue outside.

House purchase is somewhat different. Estate agents are tripping over themselves to get you a viewing of your chosen house then can't wait for your views. Once an offer is made and accepted though, time grinds to a halt and no amount of nudging makes any difference. The legal process has its own pace and we just have to live with it. We wait and wait for something called a 'date of entry', something that must coincide with the seller leaving the property, leaving behind an empty house.

These changes of pace are hard to understand and put pressure on us as participants in what is already one of the most stressful of life's events. We need a distraction, hence the boxes and the packing, which we continue with on the assumption that the two separate processes, the sale and the purchase, will deliver at roughly the same time. Our spare bedroom gradually fills with boxes until we can hardly close the door but it all seems strangely unreal. Our attic is now an empty space, its contents divided between the spare bedroom, the Wheely bin, the charity shop and the local tip in roughly equal proportions. We try to think positively by reminding ourselves of the effort our family will avoid by us doing this now instead of leaving the sorting and the boxing to them at some future date when we pass on. I'm sure their gratitude will be unmeasurable.

There are many checklists associated with moving house and many different outside parties to be notified. But no matter how much time and effort we put into researching the contract or arrangement with each one we keep coming across surprises. It seems there are unforeseen consequences to moving house. A year ago we signed up for a fixed price deal with our electric supplier. It still has 18 months to run but it appears we cannot carry this with us to a new house. Any new contract will be at a higher price....of course.

Then there's the broadband, another fixed term contract. This time there's either a cancellation or a moving charge even if we want to install the same equipment in the new place...which we don't.

Conclusion - you cannot win!

Moving house is not, of course, something you do alone. Normally you become part of a chain of house moves all of which have to synchronise at more or less the same time or else nobody gets to move. It's rather like a line of swimmers along the edge of a pool, all holding hands and leaping into the water together. It doesn't work unless you all jump simultaneously. If just one holds back then it breaks the chain and when it comes to houses, if the chain breaks then someone is left homeless. For both swimmers and houses there is, of course, always a beginning and an end to the chain, a first time buyer at one end and an already empty house at the other perhaps, but generally the longer the chain, the longer it takes and the greater the pain. Thankfully our chain is short but we do have other delays, not least of which is what happens when one of the solicitors involved catches Covid and drops out of action for a week or so.

Then finally we have a date, at last. Six or eight weeks was what the estate agent predicted but he was wrong. It was seven. This is what it has taken, from end to end. Actually we have two dates, one to move in and then seven days later, one to move out. This gives us the chance to clean and polish our old house leaving it ready for those moving in then bid farewell to the neighbours and to the village that has been our home for the last eleven years. Removers are arranged, now it is simply a matter of going through the multiple checklists we have prepared to make sure nothing is forgotten. Oh, and more packing. Boxes, boxes, boxes.

Lindisfarne

We don't often have it, but when something called 'spare time' comes along then one of the things that often emerges is an old photograph, maybe discovered in an album previously hidden beneath a pile of papers or perhaps slipped between the pages of a long forgotten book. This is because 'spare time' is often used to move our 'stuff' about, to shift it from one place to another within the house. We might call this 'tidying up'. It achieves two things; firstly it can dramatically change the appearance of one corner of the house by moving the 'things' somewhere else (or better still out of sight into a cupboard) and secondly it makes those 'things' impossible to find should you later want them. Which is what happened once before to that old photograph.

But all that was before photos changed from ink on paper to bytes, a name for a system of electronic codes first coined in 1956 to describe an ordered collection of bits, which were the smallest amounts of data that a computer could process. I am guessing that we are unusual amongst our generation for storing all our old family pictures as electronic codes, inaccessible without artificial intelligence in the form of a computer, but this is in fact what we do. And there are many advantages flowing from doing so. For example it requires far less 'spare time' to find them, they can no longer be moved into cupboards and they can't be folded up or spoilt with tea stains. It is even possible to reverse the process that got them into this form originally, to change them back to paper and ink. It's called printing. But why on earth would you want to do this!

All this brings us to a picture of our son Ben taken over 30 years ago, one which has lost none of its charm since. We were visiting Lindisfarne at the time, an island off the north east coast of England often referred to as Holy Island due to the priory which existed there thousands of years ago and was an attractive target for invading Vikings. Our memories of why we were visiting this place or even how we got there on that particular occasion are lost to us but the image of our young, red-haired son is not, thanks to this photograph.

Just recently an opportunity came to meet with Ben in Berwick, a town not far from Lindisfarne, this being a place to which we could all travel without too much inconvenience or long distance motoring. Being less enthusiastic drivers we stopped overnight en route, parked up beside Traprain Law, the remains of a long extinct volcano which we then had to climb to the top of... because it's there, then booked into a proper campsite in Berwick for day two. Ben being tired from his own long drive we fed and watered him first before waving the photo about and telling him of our plan. Could we somehow create an equally charming adult version of this photo?

The first things to be considered are the props, which in this case consist of a big lolly (preferably one with 'Holy Island' written on it) and a van, for the background, both of which must be red. Then of course we had to be on the island itself, a place that is accessible via a causeway which is only revealed at certain states of the tide. But a quick check of the tide tables revealed a low tide, an opportunity, the following afternoon. So it was mission on.

As luck would have it the scorching hot weather tempted us to the Berwick seafront in the morning and from there into the sea for a revitalising early morning swim. Then after sustaining ourselves with some exotic paninis we spotted a giant red lolly for sale, exactly what we needed. So the mission is underway and we head off to the island...but then we met the crowds. It is a fine day in summer and a convenient afternoon low tide encourages every man, plus his two dogs, to drive over the causeway to the island, park in the enormous allocated car parking space then walk the half mile or so to the castle, this being the most visible attraction for miles around. The place is absolutely heaving, dogs running everywhere, hot sweaty children who would rather be anywhere else, elderly grandparents who can barely walk the short distance through the village having reluctantly agreed to go but who are now regretting every step, they are all here. This is not ideal when you need a quiet place to try to try to recreate one very specific set of criteria. It is nigh on impossible.

Then, as we briefly escape the crowds into the maze of back streets which house the guardians of the castle, we spot it - a small red car. It is not a perfect match but red is not a popular colour, it seems, amongst the inhabitants of Lindisfarne so we must grab the shot while we can. Ben takes a stance, we snap off a few trial shots... Yes, with a little editing this could be it.

So, did we nail it?

Over thirty years separates the two pictures.

Has he really changed?

Can this really be the same person?

Was it worth the effort? Most definitely yes. The modern day Ben may not remember his first visit but he will most certainly remember this one.

Another retirement

Both our lives are due to change this year. We are retiring!

But wait a second, didn't this happen once before, somewhere around the time this blog started, a good few years ago? Ah yes, but back then we retired from paid work. This time we are retiring from unpaid work, volunteers as it were, fulfilling roles in running our local community through a sense of commitment and having responsibilities without expecting or receiving reward. But make no mistake this is still work. It has many of the features of work that tend to make it so unpopular - the way it takes over your life if you let it, the pressure to get things done on time, the boss...well no, perhaps not this one. Kate and I have both been linchpins in different community organisations for a good few years, longer than most others would wish, and we have gradually become aware of the impact this has had on our lives. The many hours we spend emailing, telephoning, organising, these are hours that are no longer ours to do with as we want.

This is not to say we regret having taken on these jobs - there are rewards to playing an active role in a small local community, a feeling of satisfaction that such involvement inevitably brings - but we both feel that it is time for us to step aside and for others to step up and fill our shoes. This is not a sudden decision and we know we may experience a certain emptiness once we have taken this step but this will be as nothing, we hope, to the pleasure we shall feel from regaining control of lives.

It is, however, easier said than done, to resign from an organisation when so much of the working knowledge of that organisation is stashed away inside your head. Things you have done at certain times, procedures you have followed as a matter of course without thinking, little bits of knowledge that reside in your head without you realising, this must now be documented so others know what needs to be done and when. For example my position as treasurer of the local community trust has put me in possession of a plethora of passwords which I use to access a range of different online services. Many of these are hidden away, saved by my computer, but I must now remember them all so I can pass them on. And what of all those emails now stored on a server somewhere, addressed not to me but to the organisation I have been representing. Will they ever be read again? Does this matter?

Then there is the physical stuff, papers going back years. Should stuff like this be stored away for future reference? If so, where? Or is this a good moment for a big bonfire? All in all the handing over process seems like it is going to need more thought and consideration than the actual job.

Meanwhile...

A quick march around Carradale bay is always a good boost for the brain cells. So when coming across the only mermaid on the beach we are naturally inclined to stay a while and admire her many attributes. She's a stunner!

Distractions

The hot weather continues, apparently. Just not here on the west side of Scotland. Over and over again we have to listen to the same thing, to hear the BBC weather man banging on about how hot it is going to get in the next few days. It is tiresome. It is sheer rudeness, deliberate perhaps, since as a UK weather man he must know full well that there are people out there who will not be experiencing the heatwave he is so confidently predicting. That's his job, after all.

Then finally it does get warmer but somehow at the same time there is a day of constant drizzle, a fine spray of water that wets everything yet the sun penetrates through this at the same time tempting us outside. Warm rain is an improvement on cold and wet, but only for a limited period; until it penetrates everything and drips off the end of your nose. We need a distraction, and the first one arrives in the form of two small children who we were allowed to take care of for a few days to help out their mum. And wow, it's a distraction! Outdoors is wet so we must find indoor distractions and the telly goes on (these are modern kids so it's endless Minecraft movies) then finally they are bored enough to venture out in the damp so it is football in the park (not really part of my skill set) so I am greatly relieved when two other football playing children appear and are happy to share the experience, for a while.

Fortunately, to follow this we have arranged another appointment, with horses. An opportunity has arisen for a trial ride on a horse, for Annalese, who is 11, and has never ridden before. We arrive at the field where three large beasts await us and they come over to meet us. They belong to Tabitha who has agreed to give tuition, which she proceeds to do, very gently and with immense patience.

It turns out Annalese is a natural and even Max, aged 6 is completely comfortable patting and stroking them, although he will not ride.

Annalese tries riding both with and without a saddle, the latter being a strange experience as the horse's muscular back moving beneath the bottom is an unnerving sensation. Such an opportunity as this coming without any strings attached or expectations is as valuable as it gets. We are so grateful to Tabs for this opportunity.

Our next distraction comes straight after the smallies are delivered back to their mum but it involves a long drive across country into a different world, one where the sun shines all day and the mercury has zoomed up inside the thermometer. The east side of Scotland always surprises us for it is so different from the west. There are less hills, just smooth rounded bumps divided into fields of sheep or growing corn. The roads tend to be straighter, although sudden changes of direction do jump out at you from time to time, and the unfamiliarity of the place names brings an unexpected level of entertainment.  Longformacus is one, Papple is another and we feel sorry for those living in Clappers or at Purves Hall.

Arriving in Berwick brings back fond memories of us sailing into the harbour in our first boat, Noggin the Nog, and hearing our two year old son Ben's voice as he repeated the depth sounder readings Kate was calling out to me as I steered across the shallow harbour bar. Some thirty five years later it is Ben who has prompted us back, this time to hear his band, Blackbeard's Tea Party play some loud music at a festival in nearby Horncliffe. Now there's a distraction!

The music is supremely danceable so once they begin to play the band are hidden behind a forest of gyrating bodies but we sit there entranced, proud parents who will leave late that night with ears ringing but no regrets. All this from a simple harbour entrance. Who'd have thought it.

Bobbing about

Eun na Mara is not a large sailing vessel. Ocean crossings in her would be difficult, not because the boat couldn't survive (she's a toughy with no qualms about going out in a good blast) but simply because the humans on board would need food and water and to carry enough of this would be difficult. Her little cupboards and lockers will only take so much and too much extra weight would make her low in the water and slow her down. So she takes us on short trips, and since she has a summer berth in Tarbert then this is the area where we sail, Loch Fyne and around the islands of the Clyde.

She will sail downwind happily, quite fast for one so small. Upwind she will go too but being so small, if this involves crashing into choppy seas then upwind sailing is hard work. The trick is to keep her moving quickly so her momentum pushes through the waves instead of bouncing off them but this is a mental challenge for the skipper who wants to gain ground to windward and tries to point the bow where he wants to go. Loch Fyne is particularly difficult because the wind tends to follow the loch, funnelled between the high ground on both sides. Exiting Tarbert harbour the choices are invariably upwind or downwind, no in between bits where the ideal sailing conditions lie. For a day sail I might choose upwind first to get the hard work out of the way early. If an overnight anchorage is planned, however, then the next day's forecast is equally important. A change in direction from one day to the next could be a real winner, played right.

On arrival at the marina I start with the plan I've had in my head for a day or so, sails up, turn right, head up the Kyles of Bute for one night, potter about, then return home. It's a scenery loaded couple of days, perfect. But as soon as we're clear of the harbour we are beating into a short choppy sea, spray flinging off the bow, strong gusts forcing me to clamber about putting a reef in the mainsail to prevent the boat leaning over too far. It is cool, the sun has barely made an appearance, and with this and the slowness of our progress upwind in mind after 30 minutes or so I review the plan. In between watching my belongings inside the cabin being tossed from one side to the other and hauling on the tiller to try to keep a good course I remember tomorrow's forecast. Today's south westerlies funnelling up the loch will become tomorrow's north westerlies, a crucial shift which, if I changed the plan, might just give me two consecutive days of downwind sailing, an unheard of event! Surely this can't happen.

I make a decision, pull the tiller towards me and ease the sheets, then we're off. Suddenly there is white foam beside me from the bow wave as we surf down the first of thousands of waves. I haven't time to check our speed but experience tells me it's over 6 knots, compared with a reluctant 3 going to windward. The boat stays dry and the gurgling noise from behind means we are flying. There are no other sailing boats in sight, just miles of sea then somewhere, up ahead of me a green concrete post marks the end of a spit of gravel and rocks. Behind this lies Otter Ferry, an anchorage where the lumpy seas can't go. All I have to do is keep steering downwind, eat the sandwiches I thoughtfully prepared earlier and keep my excitement in check till I can round up and drift into my safe haven for the night.

All goes well and once we are secured to the bottom, on a mooring, I can take stock and check the forecast again.

It's not perfect, rain is coming in overnight but it is quite warm and almost still. I erect our small homemade canopy over the cockpit, cook a meal then gaze around me. As I passed the end of the spit a trio of wetsuited swimmers was wading into the water and now I watch them arrive safely back at the shore having swum from where I had just gracefully sailed. Each to his own, I guess.

The rain arrived as predicted overnight, which was encouraging, and the morning came with a damp drizzle. Our little cockpit cover did its job well, keeping us dry. If the forecasters had got it right then around midday the sun would come out and the wind direction would change, a north westerly breeze being perfect for my return leg. The tide would also then begin to ebb, a happy coincidence (or else my perfect planning). All I had to do was wait, watch the gulls and drink tea.

Then suddenly it happened! The rays from our closest star found a gap in the clouds and flooded the world with light and warmth.  Welcome to a new world. Time check, yes the tide should now be on the turn and there are faint ripples on the water too, from a new direction. Mainsail up, cast off the mooring (thank you Otter Ferry), steer towards the end of the spit (which is now under water). Jib is unrolled and we're moving, slowly, barely a sound but there's a wake left behind us. The faint wind is flukey, turning slightly in our favour as we approach the concrete post again. One tack and we're drifting past it, bearing away and picking up speed. The hills are sheltering us no more and there's a fresh little breeze but this time the sea is flat and we accelerate smoothly away. Tarbert lies 10 miles away, still under a heavy cloud but we have blue sky above us, all is well in the world.

The passage home is quick, reaching along at 5 knots, admiring the hills, the absence of other sailing boats, and the warm breeze. 

The colour of the sea reflects the sky and reminds me why we live here. As I approach the harbour a large motor yacht emerges on a converging course which he holds for a while so I can pass ahead of him, then suddenly he veers to cross my bow, dangerously close. Priority to sail is obviously not in his vocabulary so he gets a raised finger before I'm tossed about by his massive wake. But it is just a minor event in an otherwise faultless day.

In no time the sails are lowered and we motor back to our berth, the first use of the engine since we left port the day before. I am still smiling from the two days of fast downwind sailing.

Sailing with Shrimpers part 2

'That's a pretty boat' is the most common comment we hear from anyone passing our boat. So what would they make of 30 of them, all at once?

Having arrived in Largs ahead of most of the fleet we get to welcome them as the skippers and crew arrive, tired after their long drive from their homes in England, and we can't help but notice their summer clothing, shorts and t-shirts, from starting their journey in the middle of the heatwave that has been affecting the south of England in recent days. Largs is at least 10 degrees cooler and the cool westerly wind saps away even more heat. Time for extra layers of clothing.

But when all are assembled and a fleet of 30 boats put to sea for an introductory sail around the Isle of Cumbrae the wind deserts us and these little boats can't even make ground against the weak tidal flow. Could this be a flavour of what is to come?

The real test comes a couple of days later as we move location to Tarbert, a passage of over twenty miles around the Kyles of Bute. We stop for lunch by the Buttock of Bute (seriously), eleven boats anchoring rafted up in An Caladh, a tiny sheltered harbour tucked away behind Eilean Dubh (Black Island), then we all continue beating to windward all down the West Kyle... but soon the fickle wind deserts us and it's engines on again. The Shrimper fleet slowly creeps into Tarbert, unaware that the event is secretly being captured on video - we are being filmed from above.

Click to watch the video

From this point on there is a planned itinerary of sailing and social entertainment for the days ahead, all predicated on ideal weather conditions - calm seas, sunshine and gentle winds. A glance at the forecast, however, reveals a different storyline and swift changes are made to the programme which involves tough decisions by individual boat skippers that evening before the barbecues are lit. Only a handful of boats decide to remain in Tarbert for a second day as planned so most of the fleet has to endure another tough day, sailing the twenty or so miles back to Largs the following day to avoiding the oncoming storm. Then after arriving they spend the next two days in land-based activities whilst the wind and rain blasts in, many making visits to local landmarks or National Trust properties. A lucky few catch a trip on the last surviving seagoing paddle steamer, the Waverley, and others take ferries across to Arran for the day. Not for the first time the Shrimper event has fallen foul of our unpredictable climate.

For us and Eun na Mara, Tarbert is our home port and having already made the passage to Largs and back once, the thought of repeating this in rather indifferent weather does not have much appeal. We decide to leave the boat for a while and move on board our campervan, Martin, and why not assist in shepherding a small handful of Shrimpers whose owners have decided to passage through the Crinan Canal, a relatively sheltered hiding place for small boats. Indeed without our presence a wayward inflatable dinghy would not have been prevented from making a passage through the canal on its own, propelled by the fresh wind.

The Shrimpers stop for the night at Cairnbaan, canal Lock #5, leaving us to retreat to Martin for a quiet night on our own. We head off for Knapdale and the beaver lake which lies to the south of the canal, a sheltered spot in the woods we have used before for overnight stays, but as soon as we stop we notice a plague of black flies settling all over the van - Ugh! Before even opening the doors we decide to drive away again to escape the horror. Perhaps these creatures have themselves eaten all the midges - we didn't stop to find out.

As it happens the forecast turns out to be pretty accurate. We awake to Martin being buffeted about by the wind and sit for a while watching the horizontal rain blasting sideways along the canal beside which we ended up being parked. Two days of this wind are forecast. Shrimper sailing is off the agenda but the socialising and holidaying continue for many. For us though, home is beckoning.

Despite wind being fearsome and the sea white with foam there's a bright sunny day waiting for us when we do finally arrive home, although even around our sheltered house the trees are bent over at alarming angles. We do regret having parted company with the Shrimper fleet - these sailors are good company both on the water and off - but local sightseeing on land we can do any time, should we care to do so and squeezing ourselves inside Eun na Mara whilst watching the rain come down has little appeal. We can see what is coming, thanks to good weather forecasting, enough to know that this particular spell of weather is going to be followed by another blast of wind and rain coming up from the south in the days to come. It is June and the sun, when it shines, brings heat with it. Without it, however, it is hard to imagine we are in summer at all. The wind whips away our remaining body heat and if there is rain as well we are not ashamed to become stay-indoors softies.

The urge to sail still exists, however, and several days later, whilst the Shrimper fleet are still living it up in Largs, Eun na Mara puts to sea again for a short passage to Otter Ferry, a sheltered anchorage on Loch Fyne. The return passage the following day will not be mentioned as the cold and rain returned in spades but the highlight of the trip does deserve mention, a beautiful sunset appearing just around bed time, a sight not to be forgotten for a long time.

Sailing with Shrimpers part 1

Over forty years ago an enthusiastic yacht designer called Roger Dongray put pen to paper and came up with a classic. As a result in around 1979 the first boats were built, in wood. Then, being impressed by the clever design, someone decided to fabricate moulds so the boat could be manufactured in GRP, what we now know as fibreglass. Since then the same boat has been made over 1,100 times and the subsequent ones would be indistinguishable from the first. In yachting circles this is known as a 'One Design', often created to enable competitive racing or else, as with this particular boat, the Cornish Shrimper, because the designer got it right from the start, so why bother to change it. Once built each vessel was given a number which means that modern ones - and yes, they are still made, in Cornwall - carry four numbers on their mainsail.

The 181st one to roll off the production line is called Eun na Mara ('Bird of the Sea' in Gaelic) and she now has a berth in Tarbert Harbour where she sits patiently waiting for her owners to take her out onto the sea after which she is named. One recent outing was in what we humans might describe as indifferent weather, cool and overcast, but what is more important for a sailing boat is the wind, and this was fresh, gusty, tending towards strong at times. In short, exciting.

The body of water beside which Tarbert sits, Loch Fyne, is sandwiched between two areas of higher ground and this tends to steer the wind along the loch, northwards or southwards, or alternatively gives rise to meaty blasts of wind coming off the hills. None of this prevented Eun na Mara sailing at great speed towards a small island known as Sgat Mor (skate island), around this despite putting herself at great peril from all the rocks surrounding it, then around another island, Eilean Buidhe (gold island) before tracking back to the west side of the loch once again. This whole passage is recorded on a very clever piece of technology called a smartphone, so that it is captured forever as a line on a chart, a process which Roger Dongray would no doubt have been horrified to know about when he was drawing curved lines on paper back in the 1970s.

The next little outing for our grand vessel is a couple of weeks sailing from Largs, a port some 20 miles to the east, as part of a very important reunion with around 30 more of her kind. This is the International Shrimper Week, ISW for short, and it has been an annual event for Shrimper owners for many years. The location is different each year - in 2021 we trailered Eun na Mara all the way to Suffolk in order to participate - and this will not be the first time the ISW has been held in the Clyde. It is clearly a favourite sailing location amongst Shrimper skippers, probably in part because the sailing can be challenging and to many sailors this is more important than the unpredictable and variable weather that might go with it. Just prior to the start of the event the south of the UK was suffering something of a heatwave so those driving northwards towards Scotland will have experienced a noticeable chilling of the air and a freshening of the breeze even before crossing the border. But on they came, nevertheless. Shrimper sailors are drawn together by an unseen force, a kind of magnetism perhaps, until they reach some sort of critical mass that can be described as a 'flotilla', or possibly a 'grandiloquence'.

Our passage from Tarbert to join the other Shrimpers in Largs delivered a bit of everything, a little too much. Initially cold and rather too windy, plus added rain, then suddenly about half way through our little boat was left bouncing around in no wind at all, plus more rain. Then slowly, somewhere north of the Isle of Arran, the rain eased off and then a reluctant sun made an appearance. We had started the engine to continue our progress eastwards so then, of course, the wind returned from the precise direction we were trying to go. But there was a bonus, and bonuses are always good. 

This is a Fifer, one of several generations of sailing boats built on the Clyde by the William Fife family business since the 18th century and our passage has coincided with a race ending close to Largs. The break in the weather occurs just as they overtake us, clouds of rain replaced by clouds of sail, which brings smiles to our faces and somehow makes the day worthwhile.

Taynish

We live in a corner of the country where there are many trees. They come in two recipes; there are those planted as a crop, with the expectation that they will be harvested a few decades later and then, often right next to a man-made plantation, there are areas in which the trees have planted themselves, natives if you like, having grown from seed lucky enough to have fallen on fertile ground and to have avoided being eaten or trampled on whilst still a juicy young sapling. This contrast between the managed and the unmanaged is all around us. Stands of densely planted Sitka Spruce are dark places where beneath the trees only mosses can survive and when a tree is toppled by the wind its roots are wrenched out but it only leans against its fellows as it lacks the space to fall to the ground. The contrast with the areas of natural woodland, places where the light shines through the canopy and where trees that have fallen lie horizontal along the ground, their roots exposed as a vertical mass of soil and rock, is remarkable.

These are places where ferns and grasses grow alongside vigorously growing oak seedlings. Life is abundant here. Insects flit about - bright yellow butterflies, damsel flies, wasps and bees - seeds float through the air, drifting along on whatever breeze there is and the smells are of fresh living things or of damp wood being absorbed back into the land by the natural process of decomposition.

Taynish Nature Reserve occupies a peninsula on the western shore of Loch Sween, a long sea water loch which cuts into the land bringing the Atlantic Ocean into the west coast of Scotland. There is salt water on both sides, although there are fresh water lochs within the landscape too, and this is an area of native woodland that has existed for thousands of years, since the ice retreated from the land, being revered and respected today just as it has always been.

Parking Martin at the end of the narrow single track access road we set off on a circular walk (or as the Americans would say, a hike) which follows a waymarked route through the woodland to the base of a steep hill. Everywhere we look are trees, mostly oak, but these are not nice symmetrical upright specimens as you might see standing alone in a field with sheep grazing all around. Instead these trees are just as old but they are gnarled and twisted, branches going off in all directions, some of which are lifeless, hanging on or broken and drooping onto their fellows. Wild storms sometimes blow in here and these dictate the shape of these trees, ripping out the tallest, encouraging adaptation, evolution if you like, to occur with the result that native oak woodland has a look all of its own. Fallen timber lies on the ground, gradually being dissolved back into the landscape and in doing so providing food for beetles and a variety of multi-legged critters. Oaks have been described as hotels due to the fact that they provide homes for so many different species. But although oak is dominant here it is not unique and this variety provides subtle shades of different colours. The ferns popping up all over the place are startlingly varied too. Bracken, common and widespread all over Scotland, has some serious competition here and, unlike elsewhere, fails to prevent small tree saplings from getting to the light with the result that the forest here is regenerating, reinventing itself constantly.

We follow a well made path which begins to rise, rough stone steps guiding us up towards steeper ground and giving us a different view at each step. Through a gap in the tree cover we briefly see water glinting behind us although by this time we have lost our sense of direction and cannot work out which body of water we are looking at, the path having changed direction so often. Higher now we leave the tree cover behind and follow a faint track across an overgrown meadow, ever upwards towards a distant ridge summit. The plants have changed but the variety has not - small white daisy-like flowers, blue and pink blossoms - and I am made painfully aware of my ignorance when it comes to naming wild flowers.

Above the tree line we suddenly get the views. In every direction there is a body of water and working out what's what isn't as easy for us as we might have expected, given our familiarity with the area and having travelled around it both by land and by sea. 

We recognise the paps on the isle of Jura but it looks like there is another piece of land in front, in which case what is the water in front of that? And does that connect with another body of water to the north? And where is Corryvreckan, the narrow gap between Jura and Scarba through which those powerful tidal currents run? Eventually, as we rest our legs on a conveniently placed bench at the highest point, we gaze about us. The air is clear, no haze hiding the details but even so it takes us a while to work it all out, to put names to what we see. We get there in the end, naming each summit and stretch of water as we watch a distant yacht making its way along the Sound of Luing.

The descent from the high Taynish ridge is steep, dangerously so, made easier by the rock steps placed there but this is not a place to stumble. Rocks are hard things to fall onto. Soon we are back in the trees, our eyes boggling at the uncurling leaves of yet more ferns we have never before encountered. The sun has shone all day and this has clearly brought the tourists out onto the roads but on our walk we have met just one other person, a fellow admirer of the wild, who stops for a brief chat before moving on. Somehow this makes us feel special, privileged even, and delighted that just for today we have not had to share this special place.

Wildlife

It is always nice to find a warm spot where you can curl up a take a snooze. Take, for example, the top of a compost heap which is normally covered with an old piece of carpet to stop the weeds growing. There is heat from below, decaying vegetable matter, and then even on a cloudy day there might be enough heat from above too. You're probably feeling quite full after breakfasting on a couple of large slugs that happened to slide your way earlier in the day so why not chill out as you digest your food. Of course it is annoying when someone lifts the rug off just so they can take a photo (for which they didn't even ask permission) but you just blink once then wriggle sexily and ignore them. Thankfully they covered you up again.
This is the life of a slow worm, by the way, but I expect everyone knows that. We have several who live in our compost heap.

Earlier photo

More exciting still was the creature who porpoised next to our boat just as we were lowering the sails outside Tarbert harbour. Only ever offering a brief glimpse of the dorsal fin before curving their bodies below the water these creatures somehow manage to inhale enough air to sustain themselves for long enough so that no matter how hard you look you'll rarely see a second emergence.
'Did I really see that?' is the thought that comes to mind, or was it a trick of the light flashing off a wave? Even the seal who stuck his head up above the water for a good look at us could not shed any light on this.

The following morning it was a bit of a shock, just as we were emerging from inside Eun na Mara's cabin, to come face to face with Mr Swan, whose long neck brings his head up higher than our low freeboard so he can peer right into the cockpit. I suspect he was looking for a snack but there is clear guidance on feeding swans. Basically don't. If ever you are tempted to toss them a small crust of your sandwich then bear in mind this will not sustain them and too much of it will actually cause them harm. Also they are strict vegetarians, as indeed are we.

Mr Swan follows Mrs Swan around like he's on a piece of string, dutifully guarding their one remaining chick. Sadly the others have all succumbed to one or other of the predators that share Tarbert harbour, the gulls, the fish, perhaps even an otter. It happens every year - this couple never seem to raise a family successfully.

No sooner had we arrived home when the message comes via Facebook. [This does not imply swans are Facebook users.] The last chick has been taken by gulls! Tragic for them but at least this has stimulated a conversation on how better to protect future attempts at swan parenthood.

Wasps have been attracted to our car port as a nesting location ever since it was built some years ago. It is sheltered, dry and safe from most predators (do wasps have predators?). In order to build a nest they strip very thin pieces of wood in layers from anything close by (our garden shed being convenient, although I do try to discourage this with some preservative paint). The wood is made into a pulpy paper-like nest building material inside their bodies and then this is used to create an amazing structure, usually tucked away up high beneath the canopy. We don't have a problem with this - the wasps are themselves predators of other insects - until late in the year when there are less insects about so the wasps turn to anything sweet they can find to sustain themselves and eating an ice cream can suddenly become quite hazardous. Even in winter wasps can still get you as the queen will wait out the cold hidden away in the woodpile, waking up only long enough to stab you in the bare hand. And as I discovered last year, a wasp sting hurts, for several days, and can be worse if you are allergic to their venom.
So the long and the short of this is that we try to keep an eye out at this time of year so we know if we are hosting a wasp colony. A visual inspection into the corners will usually spot them. This time, however, it revealed another family - spiders. The tiny round balls are full of spiderlings who will all grow into menacing predators, unless the blue tits get to them first. So like the swans, we wish them well but leave them alone.

All of which neatly brings me to the subject of beavers. Phased out in Scotland some years ago (a pleasant way of saying killed off) these lovable creatures were reintroduced on a trial basis to an area close to where we live. They were given a considerable area of land in which to live and this includes Loch Coille-Bharr.

Uninhabited today, when you walk around the loch you soon see signs of buildings, walls and other structures, and realise that this area was once populated by humans, There are the remains of a whole village, Kilmory Oib, hidden amongst the trees and it is, of course, the trees that make this place so suitable for the beavers. 

Following the path around the loch one might expect to see them popping out everywhere but no, if you really want to see them you have to brave the midges and go out at dawn or dusk. This clearly disappoints some people but for us, just being there and seeing evidence of their presence is enough.

Strangely though, this unique 'trial' reintroduction is not the only place in Scotland that beavers can be found. Tayside on the east side of the country now has a substantial population, so many in fact that there is even talk of culling to reduce numbers, their natural predators, wolves and lynx, being absent. How did they arrive on Tayside? Nobody really knows for sure but arrive they did. Perhaps this was a surreptitious freelance release by someone who just fancied having them around. This country is very much their natural home after all.

Land to sea

Longer days, real warmth from the sun when it shines, lighter breezes, all this brings on our sailing urges. Our elderly Cornish Shrimper sitting on her trailer under the carport down the garden talks to me whenever I go down that way saying 'When are you taking me sailing, putting me back in my natural element? I'm getting all dried out and wrinkly here.'

So who are we to ignore her.

But first, I have a big reel of rope, 60 metres of the stuff, which needs to be divided up to make three new halliards and a main sheet. [Non-boaty's bit: A halliard is the rope what pulls the sails up. A sheet is what pulls them into shape so they catch the wind. The various bits of cordage on a boat all have different names. Nothing, in fact, is actually called a 'rope'.] 

We're upgrading too. When we bought the boat a few years ago we're pretty sure that all the halliards were original, fitted when the boat was built back in 1985, and 8mm three strand rope was considered adequate. Indeed it has survived pretty well. But the rope is quite stiff, hard on the hands, and there are a few little nicks here and there, little frayed pieces, so we reckon the time has come to upgrade. The new rope is smooth, soft to touch, 10mm thick and is white with a green fleck running through it, matching the green of the hull. But threading all this correctly into place when the mast and the other spars are lying horizontally along the deck requires concentration and patience, without which you will end up with a tangle of twisted lines to sort out when the mast is raised.

Despite knowing this, it is time for the first mast raising of the season. We pull the boat out clear of the car port but no further. Since we live at the end of a quiet road this is a place where we can almost guarantee not to have an audience watching us, an important factor when you are about to try something as exciting as a mast raising. The process involves us both climbing up onto the deck (which is now high above the road as the boat sits on her trailer) so that I can lift the heavy wooden mast while Kate pulls on the jib halliard [again, this is a piece of rope]. We have done this before, many times, so we know what we're doing and surprisingly, there are very few tangles to sort out. The new halliards present a flashy look on an otherwise aged boat. Job done, everything is folded down again until launch day. It's all down to the weather now.

Ah yes, the weather. 'Today is the hottest day of the year so far!' It is blasted out all over the news so it must be hot...somewhere. So how is it that where we are the rain poured down from dawn to dusk, torrential at times, the wind blowing it horizontally and the sun never showed its face? The answer to this question lies in the fact that we live in a remote and forgotten place. Few people live here. General statements about the weather made on the national news are aimed at the majority, people who live in cities, and mostly those who live in the south east of England, which might as well be a different planet to the one we inhabit. We wish you all well as you swelter in your 27 degrees of heat, sitting out in your parched gardens praying for rain to water the grass.
But I digress.
Returning to the matter at hand, there is a combination of factors that must coincide in order that Eun na Mara can take to the water safely. The wind must be light and preferably from a westerly direction so that in Carradale Harbour we are sheltered. Anything from the east will pick up waves and push them sideways across the slipway making launching almost impossible. The rain must also cease (this is purely a preference - we don't relish getting wet) and then finally the tide must be coming in, at least half way up. This last factor is because if anything delays the launch you don't want the water to be disappearing downwards away from you. As it happens the lower part of the slipway down which the trailer must roll is covered in a green slimy weed which is like an ice rink to walk on.

At high water this weed is covered over and the operation can be carried out much more safely. So we wait, watching the weather forecast, letting the hottest day of the year slip by and hoping that when the moment does eventually arrive for this combination of factors to come together it won't clash with something else in our busy agendas.

Local assistance is on hand to ease our stress levels when we do decide to 'go for launch'. John is just the man we need, a practical sort who can anticipate things before they happen and doesn't mind getting his hands grubby. He has a boat of his own on a trailer in the garden of his house so there may be a trade off involved soon.

Now we just need the tide to give us a bit more water... so we wait, something which I admit I find very difficult to do. I need a project, a job to do, to while away the hours. Then the rain starts. Then it stops and the sun is out. What can possibly go wrong.

Time slips away and we drive to the harbour, Eun na Mara following dutifully behind us, and start the mast raising, for real this time then reverse down to the waiting wet stuff. A time lapse here. Getting the camera out is not the first thing you think about when you're hanging onto the piece of rope that is all that prevents the boat drifting away to sea without you on board. Between trailer and sea there are a hundred things to worry about but it all goes well, experience shows, and we even manage it in the dry.

It is late in the day when we motor out of Carradale Harbour. We have a passage of nearly 20 miles to the next safe harbour, so up go the sails and we steer northwards, a fresh little breeze carrying us away. It is cool and it gets cooler when the rain begins to fall but there's no going back now. We're sailing quickly with the wind behind us but the cold gradually seeps into our bodies until finally, hours later, the entrance to Tarbert harbour finally comes into view. Then it is engine on, motor in, tie up alongside the pontoon, kettle on, time for a late dinner. It is 8pm.

Once inside our tiny cabin the hatch is closed so the heat is retained, allowing the warming up process to proceed, and before long we are tucked up in bed. Job done. Eun na Mara will be berthed here for the summer, waiting quietly, ever ready for us to take on a new adventure.

Things not mentioned about small boats like ours include the way we navigate. Modern electronic navigation systems require electricity, invariably 12 volts, but we have no means of generating this. Instead we use our phones which use only 5 volts and we carry spare power in small battery packs that can be charged up from a small solar panel. The operative word is small but this doesn't mean less powerful technology. Evidence of this is shown below.

 Passage data: Distance 19.2 nautical miles; average speed 4.4 knots; maximum speed 7.4 knots!