Upstairs

Today we got a floor upstairs! Tomorrow the plaster board arrives. That's the good news. The not so good news is that from Monday the joiner is working elsewhere for two weeks!

The toad and the hedgehog

The house we are presently staying in is built deep into a steep hill side of rock. Sitting having breakfast yesterday morning looking out of the window I noticed a very glum looking toad slowly and seriously making his way up the rock towards the top. I wondered why he needed to and indeed why he imagined he'd be able to.

What's at the top that isn't at the bottom? Why didn't he take the longer but much easier and less precarious route? The arrow's pointing straight at him. If you enlarge the picture you can see him - just. He looks like a rather worried pebble with legs!

He spent a long time contemplating the situation and thinking he may have misjudged it somewhat. Eventually he turned to come down, missed his footing and bounced back down to the bottom in a fraction of the time it took him to get up. He stayed at ground level for a while regaining his composure. Then he did what he should have done in the first place, walked away from the rock face in the opposite direction!

I don't know if this little hedgehog is a friend of Toad, but she too seems to makes life hard for herself. We see her often in the evening slowly (very slowly) making her way up the steep drive past our house and beyond. It takes her ages and she often stops on the way for a rest. It's gravely and stony and can't be very comfortable, but she keeps going until she disappears round the bend further up the drive.

We wondered if it was some sort of game she had like a helter skelter ride. When she gets to the top she curls into a ball and rolls down to the bottom. But a few days ago, I watched her walk down the hill in much the same weary fashion that she used when walking up. Do hedgehogs live in hedges? If so there are plenty she could chose from at ground level with nice views over the loch.
We had some friends staying recently. One evening, driving along the lane, we saw another little hedgehog, sadly it had been run over, and was struggling to get up. It was distressed and obviously in pain, and only the very hard hearted could have left it to struggle on its own. We managed (well, one of the friends mainly, an ex brown owl, who doesn't faint at the sight of blood!) to lift it into the car and drive with sirens blaring, to the wildlife hospital in Ullapool. Its chances of survival seemed slim, but we left it in the capable hands of Beatrice who gave an injection, wrapped it in a warm towel and placed it in a heated box overnight. That was two weeks ago. Yesterday I had a phone call from Beatrice to say that 'Hoffie' as he is now called had survived! For the first 10 days he had been very shaky and seemed only to be able to walk in circles (that sounds like a Hoffmann!) but had slowly improved and was now eating and walking normally, though still a bit shaky. He may not be released back into the wild but the hospital has a hedgehog village for just such casualties. I'm happy we helped him, but part of me wonders if we shouldn't just have left him to his own fate. Wildlife is very much about the survival of the fittest and we interfered with the balance. On the other hand he'll have a secure and hopefully, good quality of life in Ullapool, and it was simply impossible just to leave him suffering, on his own in pain.

Location Location!

This is where 'Brookwood' sits. About one fifth up the hill on the loch side. Lochbroom is a sea loch. Ullapool sits at the mouth of the loch and to get there by car one must drive down to the head of the loch and then back up on the other side. A journey of about 10 miles, with no traffic jams, roundabouts, traffic lights or even very often any traffic, apart from the occasional passing car, lorry or, in the summer camper van or caravan. On the road in to Ullapool there are no roads leading anywhere either to the right or left. In the winter the deer gather at the side of the road. However often I do the journey I never tire of the views of the loch and beyond either towards the sea or to the mountains with the ever changing light and colour.

This is the journey I take sometimes several times a week either to go in to Ullapool where I turn left at the end of the avenue of trees or right if I'm going to Inverness, London or anywhere else really!
Clicking on the photos should enlarge them and show off my wobbly handwriting!

Updating Brookwood

I've so much I want to blog about, I don't know where to begin! But I'll just give an update on progress so far. Ollie (youngest son) arrived last month and began making a mess!

and making holes and pulling cables through the ceiling. He came with his mate Miles and they were both great company and good work mates.

The bathroom arrived and stood around outside for a while until I worried about it getting wet (this doesn't bode well for having a bath!) and made Niels bring it in

The plumber and his mate tackled the air ducts for the heat exchange system. First they laid out all the bends

then the straights, and after much head scratching and studying the not ever so clear instructions

they came up with this. I think it's slightly different from that than shown on the plans but the general opinion is it will do

And this is the famous heat exchange system. The one side deals with circulating air and the other heats water - I think. I've actually no idea how it works so I won't talk about it at the moment. I need to study the wires, and coils, and dials and little switches in more detail first!

The heat exchange system sits just to the left of the back door, in a cupboard - eventually

The struggle for me has been sealing and making good the plastic membrane. Every pipe and cable that comes through the sheeting needs to be sealed with tape or silicone, to prevent air loss

A stuck up soil pipe! We do hair dryer tests. One stands upstairs with the hairdryer switched on and pointing at the membrane while the other stands below and feels if there is a draft! I can't say this system is totally efficient as we can't always seem to agree where the draft is coming from!

This is my neatest sticking up

We decided on down lights, but because the membrane would melt with the heat from the lights we needed to find suitable boxes to sit them in. Eventually we found a company in Denmark

Here is the same box viewed from underneath. After I'd taped the membrane round the sides of the ninth box and stuck both myself and the cable to the box with silicone I began to wonder why we hadn't just stuck with a couple of token down lights instead of the twenty four we've ordered

Once all the sticking and sealing is done there is the insulation to do. This is glass wool and goes everywhere. I should wear a mask as it makes me cough and itchy and scratchy and generally irritable - Niels says that's nothing to do with the insulation! There is still loads more to stuff into cavities and walls and floors but it's in our interest to do it as well as we can.

On a lighter side. The Internet connection arrived with new phone line

followed closely by the fridge freezer

I leaned some tiles up against the wall and played pretend bathrooms

And last but not least the top of the garden has been landscaped and tidied up

Now we can sit in our garden and see that the grass really is greener on the other side of the fence!

The blog is back!

At last! And here is where it all happens - the caravan! A 'His' and 'Hers' sort of arrangement - my side being the tidy side. We have an Internet connection in the house and by setting up the computers in the caravan are able to operate by wireless connection. At present we are staying along the lane so come here most days either to work on the computer or in the house.

The side of the caravan doubles as an Ikea warehouse. We had some friends staying last week and they put up the awning for us - We'd tried but put it on up side down. Now it can store part of our Ikea kitchen - flat packed, as you can see. We had to 'pop' down to Edinburgh to order it, a round trip of 420 miles, but Ikea delivered it for us

I expect you'd like to see whats going on in the house? Well, prepare yourselves!

It's a jumble of pipes, and cables and general chaos. The bathrooms are being stored under the stairs - the people causing this chaos?

Here they are! - having lunch! They did tell me they had been incredibly busy just before I arrived and took this picture! A combination of plumbers, electricians, mates, and apprentices. They do work hard and are a great bunch. And at times we are all struggling to understand the next step in the construction of this zero energy house. I want to write more and will do over the next couple of days. It's good to be back. I'll just leave you with one view taken at two different times of the day

Morning

Evening.
I love it here. I can't think of anywhere else I would rather be. I just need to adjust to west coast timing where things take a little longer to happen!