painting the village hall red

Last weekend saw frenetic activity with rollers and brushes and about 100 litres of paint. The village hall needed a facelift and a new colour scheme from daffodil yellow. Now a more subtle mix of red and cream, the hall looks smart and ready for ceilidh action - or the regular Wednesday afternoon tea session. The turnout was amazing. Over twenty folk turned up and spent most of the weekend painting and cleaning. The full ferry crew spent a goodly part of their off rota week helping out - with skipper JB covering a vast area with emulsion. A few fish farmers scrubbed and cleaned after their shifts, and a fun time was had by all. Our wee island really can turn on the most amazing efforts and just gets things done. The Village Hall committee has a huge reservoir of goodwill so all pulled together. Okay - so there are always the naysayers in any community - lamenting the change of colour scheme and regretting changes not initiated by themselves - but it was getting tatty and now looks great and we had fun doing it. Roll on the first ceildih !

fixing a hole

The turning of the first sod is a momentous occasion. Your building plot loses its virginity. It is no longer unsullied, untouched by human hand. Our plot was first sullied by Ian and his digger three years ago or as the planning permission required an archaeological survey. On Gigha if you trip over a stone it is probably of archaeological interest. We have 12 Scheduled Ancient Monuments - the creme de la creme - and the archaeologists even missed the Fishermen’s Cave with its graffitti going back to before the Battle of Culloden. (they couldn’t find it amongst the bracken and the brambles). There are literally hundreds of sites on the island. Dun an Trinnse (fort of the trench) one of the 12 SAMS, is within sight. Ian sullied our plot again a couple of weeks ago. It will never be the same again, never just be a bit of grazing land in the corner of a field with a sea view. Our vision is going to be sculpted into the land and our house rise up from the ground. Very romantic - if you believe that sort of thing, but also back breaking, sleep losing, weight losing, money juggling and hopefully creating something positive that will outlive us and nestle into the landscape. We’ll see.

life's a beach

Our plot now looks like a cross between an archaeological excavation and WW1 trenches with two circular excavations about a metre deep, one 9m diameter and one 12m, corresponding to the two roundhouse perimeters. Last week we spent a day with Ian and his mini-digger. He screefed off the topsoil and it is piled up out of the way, but the subsoil is quite rich loam in places. Beneath the soil there is a beach.

This is probably abut 8-10,000 years old and was made after the last glaciation. Most of Scotland has risen a good few metres since then due to isostatic readjustment (I knew that Geography degree would come in useful one day). This is the land rising slowly after the weight of ice was taken off it, when it melted. The land is still rising here and this might counteract the effects of sea level rise due to global warming a wee bit, over the next few hundred years. Beneath the small roundhouse is a sandy area - lovely white sand, and beneath the larger roundhouse beach pebbles. We haven’t found any shells yet. There are some large storm beach boulders, probably originally of glacial origin, and these will be used for a stone revetment retaining the driveway and in our rock garden. The pebbly subsoil will be screened (by hand !) and the pebbles used as the drainage layer fringing the turf roofs. We also put in the top drain and screefed off the shed site. Yes, we did hit the water table and the trenches have ponded up in places. The top drain should sort this out and take ground water off the actual buildings’ footprints. Now it is down to Martin to specify the foundations.