Sunday 11th October 2008

It’s heaven sitting here, letting the sun penetrate through my thick fleece, burning my face and rendering my eyes useless as it’s so bright. The heat is also penetrating through the slate bench as it’s had a chance to get heated by the sun while I went inside to make some more tea. I hadn’t anticipated being able to sit outside in the middle of October at our new pad. The views are mind enlarging across the sea loch to the mountains. ‘Even better than at our house in Taynuilt’, Damon and I say to each other, and I always classed them as spectacular. It’s wonderful just sitting here on the bench our girls made for me yesterday from roof slates nestled against the front of the house, laptop on top of my lap – well that’s what it’s made for.
I can hear the autumn wind teasing through the leaves of the few trees at the front of house, while a few flies are zooming around me. They’re not like the Tiree flies though that land on you everywhere and are annoying. They are just doing their own thing, possibly enjoying the heat of the autumn and revelling at still being alive before the winter comes. Some geese in the distance honking away, I have to strain to make out what it is. Half an hour ago I heard a dog in the distance, or is it an hour ago already.

The clouds are gathered around the sun and to the left of it, and at times they make the sun light less intense, but it doesn’t last a minute when it is up to full strength again, even though it looked like the dark cloud would take an age to pass. To the right of the sun is open sky with a few floaty clouds, they seem to travel to meet the broken pack and be a new barrier as the sun slowly moves it way to the right.
There are still water drops on the rushes at the front of the house, they twinkle across my view concentrating the sun light. There wasn’t really any rain since we arrived yesterday, but it was slightly drizzly on the skylight this morning.

The kids are playing horses around the house. Damon steered their game to include clearing away the horses poo – it was heaps of wet leaves he swept up along the path last time he was here. Now they are making horse jumps out of scrap wood, and running their stables to perfection.
There is a noise in the distance that I’m straining to hear, it sounds like a gust of wind, but much louder than the wind we have here. It’s travelling along the peat lands and sounds like it passing a few hundred meters away, but it never reaches us.

Yesterday we arrived on the morning ferry to our ‘new pad’. Although I had been here twice before, it was when we came to view and then after our offer was accepted. I hadn’t yet been since it transferred to our ownership 6 weeks ago. Driving up the track had the same excitement for me. We parked by the ruined croft again, as the track needs a 4-wheel drive vehicle on it at the moment (our priority is to get the road sorted out), and each of us carried as much as we could down the track to the house. It felt just as exciting as the first time Damon and I walked along to view the house, when it all just felt ‘right’. It was a warm May day, the air heavy with scents as we wound our way through the narrow track bounded by natural hedges. Then we turned a corner , and the vista opened up, and saw Torr na Locha croft nestled against a short, heavily wooded cliff, beckoning us to let us into its secrets.

As we walked the 500 metres to the house, kids were dropping bits here and there as it became too heavy. Next they needed wellies to go through one of the deep puddles, luckily they were in the arm fulls that we were carrying. I managed to just tip toe through with my waterproof training shoes.

Next cup of tea. ‘this is what it’s all about’ we say to each other again. ‘Shall we just sit here for a bit longer, have lunch outside, and then go out?’ ‘Sure’, but really I just fancy sitting here all day, soaking up the rays and the views that are rejuvenating me. I feel I can indulge myself at the moment, having not been well for 4 weeks , I don’t have to be busy doing things all the time. Four weeks already.

I’m getting a numb bum. It’s sitting with my legs crossed and laptop perched up I think, or is it just having sat here for too long. ‘ding ding’, Damon’s phone gets another text. ‘oh, it’s another booking for Easter next year’. We subscribed 3 months ago to an on-line booking system, and have found we can be anywhere and get a text alerting that we’ve had another booking, and all the details are collected automatically. We don’t need to do anything. What a difference to having send multiple emails. And even that system was so much slicker than when we just started at Bonawe House in Taynuilt, and we had to send brochures to people as only a handful of people had internet access to see our website. That was nearly 10 years ago now.

Torr na Locha is the new challenge. We have delighted in exploring these ‘new lands’. Yesterday we went for a walk with the kids; up through the back gate through the trees, dodging branches left and right to find a path. The odd bramble trying to find it’s way across, then after a few minutes popping out onto the heather moorland. ‘look Anja, it’s heather, that’s what we could do with for our baskets at Bonawe House’. ‘But mum, we can’t take it from here, this is wild’ ‘ I know, but this is ours, and we are allowed to take it from here’ ‘ ooh yeah’. Up and up to the cairn, ‘and look, this is bog myrtle’, ‘bog myrtle is my favourite, it keeps the midgies at bay, and it’s such a nice smell’, though not much smell now compared to the summer, a little reaches our noses as we trundle through it. An explore to find a way off, as the hill is edged by blocks off cliffs. We find a weaker point and clamber down one at a time, to arrive at thicket, but we skirt past this and across some bogs to a faint track. ‘now we’re off our land, the border is the edge of the cliffs’. Further round we go to the coast, where Staffa stands out proud, with Lunga sheltering behind, and Dutchman’s cap reveals itself around a further corner to the kids delight. We come to a shingle beach where the Atlantic is making itself heard, despite such a calm day, and the impressive basalt columns that look to have great rock climbing on them. ‘The fossil leaves are somewhere around here’ Damon says, but we decide to leave it for another day and head back to our own beach to explore. We leave the discarded turquoise lobster pot that we want to pick up one day, and a rock that Ceri finds with what can imaginatively be seen to have a fish fossil in it.

Figure 2. Our beach
Figure 3. Caterpillar

On the way we pass some caterpillars, that the kids pick up, then lots close together, and soon Ceri has 6 in her hands, and they are all left in a nest. Then we skip across the rocks along the sea, and arrive at ‘our beach’. Some shells and small crab shells are found, some drift wood and large buoys. Then we delight at finding a small stretch of shell beach. Not as fine as the Tiree and Arisaig beaches, but still our very own shell beach. Then at the most easterly point we get to the ‘Queen’s chair’ as discovered by Ceri. A large rock with a back rest and leg rests and big enough for us all to squash onto. We head back up the hill, clambering through a few rocky steps to end up back at our gate. ‘ there’s an old crate just down from the gate, worthwhile to remember if we need some fire wood’ I think to myself. Then back to car to get another load of ‘stuff’ we brought with us – lots of stuff to ferry from the car to the house, so we do a few loads at a time.

We proddle the coal in the Aga again when we get back. It was quite wet in there as it hasn’t been used, so we need to tender to it all day to get it going again. It is our only source of heating and hot water while we are here these 2 weeks, and hopefully we will be able to graduate to using it for cooking instead of the gas camping burner perched on the Aga for tea on that first day. Neither of us have used a solid fuel Aga before, although we are very familiar with wood burning stoves and coal central heating. For some reason this is not suitable for wood, which is a real shame, and only coke can be burned which we buy in 50 kilo sacks that we have to wheel down from the car. That’s just to last us 4 days. We watch during the day as the temperature of the Aga increases and the mercury rises slowly, but it’s another day before it’s hot enough to boil a pan of water on the hot plate. It seems a shame, but the Aga will only fulfil a purpose while we are doing up Torr na Locha. Once we have it ready for lets it will need an electric cooker, as we cannot expect guests to pick up coal and know how to look after the fire. It seems to me that it should be possible to convert the Aga to electric, but Aga don’t seem to think so. ‘ trade in your old Aga for a new electric one’ their adverts go. And probing deeper only reveals that you cannot change it, only to mineral oil, but it will be significantly less efficient. And it’s already so inefficient!


Figure 4. The 'pink' bedroom - due to be enlarged

The kids love the pink bedroom. It has stars and moons painted in a band around the room, including some fluorescent ones that light up in the dark. And the nearly full moon shines in through the curtainless window. They love that the room used to belong to a girl called Oona, as the letters that were on her door are still visible from the discolouration of the wood. The kitchen sink tiles are hand painted and feature two boats, named Lynda and Alwyn, and we explain that this was the name of the previous people. They are fascinated and mention this over and over again.