We thought you’d really get a kick out of seeing some of the Lairds and Ladies who have been visiting over the last couple of weeks. These pictures are also available at my Blipfoto account on a regular basis (though you’ll have to dodge my other photos of walls and flora and fauna to get to em).
To book a tour, click here.
Enjoy!
On his second day onsite Tim Stobart, our local tree surgeon, had the unenviable task of dealing with a windblown larch which still stood, albeit at a precarious angle. Here are some photos of the high point of the operation!
Today we began to clear the most dangerous of the fallen trees with the help of Tree Surgeon Tim Stobart. These photos show Tim working on the big Ash which fell across the ravine path. Tim’s time has been paid for by the Scottish Laird Project.
We’ve been working on this solidly for a week, ensuring we have all the dates available, and that the grounds will be ready in time for the first tours in early April. We’re now set, and you can book tours from this site, here.
Oh dear. We’d escaped the worst ravages of the big storm in the first week of January until there was a bit of a windy night last week, and this tree finally keeled over. What a pity!
We have had an extraordinary beginning to 2012 with hurricane force winds piling through cutting electricity, knocking trees over and making life very difficult. We now seem to have calmed down and we are back to what we should have been doing, which is planning for a very big year. In the meantime, here are some photos of the damage and a short movie showing just how swollen the river became during the worst of it!
From Macbeth to Wild foraging, from a Conference of the Fairies to a haunting in the garden, we have three days of plays this coming week as part of Cowalfest. For more information, please go to the Cowalfest site.
We’ve had our drivehead revamped. Not the whole drive mind, just the bit at the top where Lairds and Ladies park (I know, I know, we do take care of you eh?). The rest of the drive is still not very good, but that will come next year. Anyway, in partnership with the council, myself and the Charitable Trust organised this resurfacing work. The council wanted to sort this out because it helped them out with their bus service. This new drivehead is also the end of the line, or the turnabout for the bus to Bute and to Dunoon, as well as for the school.
The upshot of all this is that now our standing stone is no longer covered in foliage and moss, but stands proud and obvious in the middle of a very nicely compacted area of hardcore. We’re very pleased and we’re now planning to plant up the area …
We have put up the first tranche of new signage, and it is looking lovely.
We’re revamping all the signage at Dunans at the moment as it is not as clear as it might be, and we have also won funding from Commun na Gaelig for translation, so they’ll be bilingual signs too later this year. We’re already getting increased footfall from last year and we need to ensure everyone knows where they’re going. Hopefully these white instructional signs will do the trick for now!
And while I was up in the meadow, having also checked to see how our water supply was doing I took a couple of the castle.
We’re having the driest period at Dunans I can remember since we came to Glendaruel in 2003. We’ve not had an ‘Argyll Soaker’ for at least ten weeks, and even before then the winter didn’t bring the rain it should’ve done. It feels like the east coast and not the west it is that dry. Well, of course this has advantages: the first and most obvious is that the usual plague of midges hasn’t materialised — we can leave windows open at night and we do not get inundated with insects. So fewer bites, but I do find myself wondering how it is affecting the animals and birds further up the food chain. The other advantage is that we’re all looking very tanned and fit. Being outside all the time is a luxury we haven’t had in previous summers — I know it will sounds ridiculous, but in previous years we haven’t been able to have barbecues, let alone al fresco lunches. You’d think the smoke would act as a midge suppressant — well it does, but as soon as the smoke rises away from you, you’re inundated with the things.
Anyway, the dry weather enables all sorts of things, not least the erection of our newly minted Dunans signage (pictures of which soon). Many visitors had said the previous signs were unclear, so we have gone for black and white and often. It seems to work and looks really good. We’ve included the new Dunans crest, with phoenix, and we’re now planning more. I’m also looking at innovative arrow signs, or posts. The idea is that rather than get plastic arrows to show the way, we use a chisel to shape the head of our posts into arrows, and then white paint to emphasize the shape. I’ll report back on how that works next time.
One of the other htings we’ve been doing is filling in forms. They are endless when you are renovating an historic property, especially when you are dealing with the Scots beaureaucracy. Today its an application for a Business Reference Number (BRN) with the Rural Payments and Inspections Directorate (why they can’t use our company number I am not sure). The BRN is necessary to make an initial ‘Statement of Intent’ to the Scottish Rural Development Programme. Only when the SRDP people have assessed our SOI can we apply to their fund. Sheesh. I’m acronymed out already. It is no wonder business people usually just get on building businesses rather than applying for funding, it is a full-time occupation.