here kitty kitty

There are loads of feral cats on Gigha - sure it doesn't do the bird population much good but the rats seem to co-exist quite happily with the cats. Over a few days as the summer ended and the nights were getting cooler we noticed a wee ginger kitten roaming round down at Ardailly. Only a few weeks old, it was starving, infested with ticks and had an eye infection. Letting nature take its course would have been one option but instead we rescued the kitten and put it in a cardboard box in our porch here at Kinnererach where it gradually recovered its strength on a diet of salmon.

It wasn't a greedy cat, was very affectionate and would break out into raucous purring that was on the Richter scale when it saw you. Now I'm a dog person though we always had cats when I was a kid. This cat took to me - it had a lovely character and the only reason why we did not keep it was because I am allergic to cats - or their fur anyway. The cat was duly taken to the cat rescue in Campbeltown and after the once over by the vet (we had already de-ticked it) was found a new home.

fabrics

We’ve just been away for almost two weeks and even though having a break from the project managed to get to Annie Washbrook’s place near Newport in North Pembs. You’ll have to go in person as she has far too much to ever be catalogued on to a website. There is a treasure trove of fabrics and many specials and ends of rolls, offcuts etc. Jayne has bought a stack of materials for her bag and doll making and has even allowed me to pick suitable offcuts in the past. This time we went a little berserk as we bought about 7 binbags full of offcuts of heavyweight curtain grade material to make all our curtains, room dividers and wall hangings. We both choose materials so it is not just a girl thing. As the house will have mostly slate or solid wood uncarpeted floors the acoustics will be quite hard. Fabrics absorb sound and will soften the acoustic. We want to have plain walls but with fabric wall hangings for colour and acoustics as well as curtains for good night insulation. With the areas needed - one pattern or colour would be a bit uninspiring so we have decided to make up patchworks of fabric offcuts and so have managed to supply Jayne with tons of work for those long winter evenings. It might seem a bit premature - we haven’t even started the groundworks yet but as we won’t get down to Pembrokeshire during the build we now have a good stockpile of the most amazing range of high quality fabrics - perfect for our needs.

Anyone thinking of curtains, upholstery etc. who is within reasonable travelling distance should definitely call in. Phone first for opening hours as Annie isn’t open everyday. The address is Penbanc Fabrics, Plas y Ffynnon, Newport, ,Pembs, 01239-820568

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.

mowing the roof

Our turf roof is going to be cut from the hay meadow that our plot occupies. We’ve pegged out the roof turf and here Lachlan is kindly topping the weeds for us. We’ll have all those lovely traditional hay meadow flowers on our roof - in a year’s time.

getting stoned

The first major delivery to the plot has been of 52 tonnes of 75mm down crusher run for the driveway. Andy is driving the Trust tractor and trailer. After this we relevelled the stone revetment that edges the driveway with our new toy - a water level and I subsequently raised the level of the revetment by about 750mm to make the 1 in 7 gradient required by our planning permission. After the 52 tonne delivery - in 4 tonne loads from the island quarry we looked at our calculations for stone and ordered another 220 tonnes of 75mm. This is now on site awaiting levelling. We will surface the driveway and parking areas with Type 1 - probably from the mainland as the dolerite in the island quarry is very hard and stable and the fines do not rot down and bind particularly well. Dolerite takes ages to weather in too. It is great as a base material but the surfacing needs to bind really well.

digging

Much digging took place during July. I spent about 8 days in dry sunny weather with Ian’s digger doing ten hour days. Here we have just started to clear the piles of topsoil from the archaeological excavation and from clearing the driveway and parking areas. Most of this has been used to bank up the area behind the Land Rover and to retain the driveway stone revetment. We can’t do much until we have the driveway and parking areas in and the shed built. As I am working on both island fish farms and we are pretty busy this will probably take until the end of September, maybe longer.

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.