This is how it should look!

For all those recent visitors we've had. This is how it should have looked when you were here. This is how it looks when it isn't raining, snowing, sleeting, or blowing a gale!

I drove back from Inverness this afternoon and took this photo, and thought I should share it with you - sorry!

Posting a letter

This morning I had a letter to post. It coincided perfectly with the arrival of spring! I left the car behind and walked down the lane to the post box

I don't think this was here yesterday when it was still winter

But in truth I expect I  simply drove past it and failed to notice that winter is losing its grip.

Spring is the time for very high tides. Most of this grass area will be under water when the tide comes in

  

The church at Clachan has a grass ramp to enable the flock to arrive by boat on the occasions the lane is flooded

This flock weren't going to church -  I don't think. Wednesday might be ante natal day at the clinic? I used to think that red and blue spots meant girl and boy sheep, but I think I may have had too simplistic approach to sheep farming! What I do know is that all these sheep are female and soon to produce lambs. They delay lambing here until April, I suspect because of the weather

I posted my letter, and returned back along the avenue

towards the turn to Letters

This little chap was just adorable, and looked at me with such reproach as I walked by  that I felt guilty for having  roast beef and yorkshire pudding at the weekend - I much preferred the yorkshire pudding I told him

His mum wasn't that impressed either!

Have I mentioned it's beautiful here! I think I have! Until I came to live here posting a letter was just ordinary. Living in Letters has taken it to a new dimension!

But my feet are firmly grounded. Here we have a wool tree and sadly a plastic carrier bag tree. Spring brings its problems! There aren't many plastic carrier bag trees and fortunately this one has only one bud!

and this one none at all, hopefully they can be eradicated.

 

 

I just love it. There is hardly a day goes by without my thinking how lucky I am to have come here

Reinforcements arrive!

Last weekend the troops arrived! Jo, Em, (with bump) Dan and Em's dad. It was brilliant. I was having a bad camera weekend, and only managed a couple of pictures. The felling of the two big trees I missed - I expect I was in the kitchen!

I failed to take the camera on the climb up Stac Polly and only took a couple of mediocre snaps of the visit to Corrieshalloch Gorge. You'll have to take my word for it that both were good. Despite rather wet windy  weather conditions - even Em who's nearly eight months pregnant made it almost half way up stac polly. At that point driving sleet and hail sent us back down again, apart from Dan who made it to the top and probably swung around on a few rocks up there enjoying the gales (spring is lovely here!)

When the troops weren't working on the Hoff Estate, they were allowed time off for good behaviour! I was sad when it was time for them to leave. I had a great time eating chocolate and drinking wine - I'm not sure what they did, I'm not sure that I left any!

On a sombre note. I was driving home early yesterday evening after having 'popped' out to do a food shop at  Tesco in Dingwall. Provisions were running low and another friend is arriving this weekend. I was almost home  when I drove into what had been a horrible accident. I must have arrived within ten minutes of it happening. I was told a man on a motorbike had driven round a bend and head on into an approaching car. We sat in a queue. I think I was about the fourth car back. A helicopter landed in the road and airlifted the man to hospital. The police then shut the road and I was told the only way for me to get home was via Gairloch. The accident happened a mile or so before Braemore junction (clicking on the map should hopefully enlarge it) on the A835. I had no alternative but to turn round and retrace my steps back to Garve,  pick up the A832  and drive some seventy miles on a circular route back to Braemore junction. I had forgotten my mobile phone and was low on petrol. The detour added about a hundred miles to my shopping trip! 

And it  made me think, yet again,  how easy it is to take this environment for granted. It is remote and at times hostile. There isn't a petrol garage on every corner with convenient towns to drive through. There are no shortcuts, just one lonely and often empty road. As I drove back in the dark, at one point  through a blizzard of snow, and yet another, swerving to avoid a deer,  I thought how  totally unprepared I am for the unexpected. At times, most times in fact, I still set off on a journey with the same mentality that I had in Woking. I have to pull my socks up. Always carry a phone, (fingers crossed for reception!) and a can of petrol. On a lighter note, if nothing else, I had food wine and chocolate provisions  in the car! I eventually arrived home safely feeling hugely relieved. The petrol guage needle on the red. Now where's that petrol can gone!

Finished, almost!

I've been busy! After much corner taping, sanding down and painting I've produced (in terms of decorating at least) the most finished room in the house - the guest room! Ok, there are still no floors or skirting board and the door frames need painting, but apart from that this is a finished room!

Oh, and the mirror has to be hung on the wall too! I need to buy a length of chain when I'm next in Inverness.

Sometimes when I get a bit despondent and think nothing is coming on and the house will never be finished I have to remind myself that this was our house a year ago almost to the day; still packed on a lorry! I took this photo (hopping up and down with excitement) on March 13th last year. The driver parked in a lay-by just before the turn into Letters while he studied the feasibility of maneuvering a huge lorry up a single track lane with passing places, that ends in a field with a not very large turning point

But he made it and so did the house!

Can one be proud of window sills? Well, I'm proud of these. I sanded down between coats and used a pad to apply the paint, and I think I've managed a superb egg shell finish, free of brush streaks, almost!

I've just heard the weather forecast and looked out of the window - I hate these dull, cloudy overcast days!

Band practice

Thursday afternoon is band practice. Niels is a drummer, a tapping on table tops sort of person. It didn't take him long to track down possibly, the only contemporary jazz band in the Highlands! They've only just started playing together and yesterday afternoon they met at our house. And on that note, I rolled up the corner tape and headed for the hills!
The following photos were all taken yesterday afternoon, over a distance of some 25 miles, and show the enormous diversity of weather. They say if you don't like the weather here, wait ten minutes, alternatively drive down the road!

These deer were along way off, and consequently out of focus. I'm looking for a new camera, but that's another blog!

This one was a lot nearer - and warned his mates that an old deer of the human variety was coming over the hill