more digging, more stone

After we relevelled the driveway and ordered the 220 tonnes of stone we decided to get enough 75mm for the parking and shed areas, but need to store this. We got 30 railway sleepers to make storage areas for aggregate etc., and have placed 16 or so here to hold about 80-100 tonnes of stone ready for placement in the parking and shed areas. There is a 100m roll of curly drainage pipe in the background - we need to make sure the water draining down from the track keeps off the main parking area and have put in a top side drain with 75mm backfill as well - sort of French drain construction to take the water away to the northern edge of the plot where our main downslope drain leads down to the sea. we did this on a Sunday morning with our friend Cliffy helping shift the sleepers into position. Originally Jayne and I had shifted the 30 sleepers on to the plot from the old silage pit at South Drumachro from where they were being recycled. This hole is now filled with over 200 tonnes of stone ready for levelling, though we have to build the revetment below the two piles of blocks and shed footings first, to get the levels right.

on the fish

This day I went to Crinan with Martin and brought Mary Ann, the fish farm work boat, back from the boatyard there. Gigha’s profile looks different from the north. Most folk see it from the east as the A83 to Campbeltown runs down the coast and the ferry runs across from Tayinloan on the western side of Kintyre to Gigha. For most of August I’ve been on the fish. I work most weekends and otherwise part time on the two fish farms and this has been a really busy time. Luckily this August has been a fairly wet month and digging would have been really muddy and messy on the plot. I lost about 6 days with the digger due to breakdowns etc., so ought to have been a bit more ahead in terms of levelling and revetting but we do have a realistic timetable overall. I have just finished a 17 day stint on the salmon farm at Highfield mostly doing net changes., but with one day off to build the sleeper shuttering for the stone - see 16th Aug blog. Net changing is hard graft and can take up to 5 hours with 5 or 6 of us. The cages are 100m diameter and the nets over 10m deep. Net changing involves much hauling and pulling and is pretty much flat out using the two workboats for the heavy lifting. We’ve been starting at 7 a.m. most days as there has been much else to do too. We managed two net changes in one day last week and this nearly killed me. I am 15 years older than the combined age of the two youngest guys and even they get tired by the grafting we do net changing. I have incipient arthritis in both hips and many other muscular aches and pains. Jayne thinks I am somewhat of a hypochondriac. Malcolm, the manager, loves net changing and is probably the strongest person there. It is a fine exercise in team work and funnily enough, you do get a sense of achievement from net changing. The last one I did on Monday 24th was the ninth in two weeks and we finished with a building SE swell as the wind freshened washing over the cage floating catwalk as we tied the net down, but it was still good.