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Saturday 17th June - Glasgow
Have been busy working on a redesign of the site, amongst other things, which is my excuse for not having posted a diary entry for almost 2 months! This entry will look back at my remaining time on Eigg at the end of April and start of May.
Most of my time during this period was spent on repairing the wood shed at Gardener's Cottage, the volunteer accommodation. It had a tree land on it at the end of last year, and was no longer watertight.
The woodshed, before I started working on it
Had to use whatever timber was lying around, which was an interesting challenge. I replaced some of the uprights with sections of nearby fallen tree trunks, and re-used some of the broken timber for smaller spans. I was also limited to a bucket of rusty nails - in fact I'm just getting some excuses out of the way in case it collapses at a later date! Unfortunately didn't have time to finish the job, and don't even have an 'after' photo as it was raining solidly for the last three days of my stay.
The blue pipe in the foreground of the photo above is the water supply to the cottage. It feeds from a stream further uphill, but not beyond the treeline, so little bits of pine needle and bark were quite common. One day I noticed that this pipe appeared to have been punctured, and a little fountain was spraying out. On closer inspection I found a rusty old nail stuck into the pipe. I was quite perplexed as to how this nail could have ended up piercing the pipe, and pulled it out ... big mistake! As I got soaked by the now large jet of water spraying out of the hole, I realised that this nail had obviously been placed there on purpose. I later found out that it was intended to be used to release an airlock which sometimes developed at that point, and must have worked slightly loose hence the small fountain. It was a lot of fun trying to stop up the hole with a new nail - full waterproof gear was called for.
Still on the plumbing front, the hot water in the cottage was heated by a back boiler in the stove. One evening, as I was throwing a couple of bits of firewood into the stove, I heard an unusual hissing sound. Thinking it must have been a particularly wet bit of firewood, I thought nothing more of it. Until, five minutes later, I noticed that the floor around the stove was covered in water, and the water was spreading out into the room, soaking the rugs. Turned out that the back boiler had sprung a leak and was pissing water out into the stove. It was too late for the emergency plumber to get a ferry over from the mainland, so after some consultation with Bob I tackled it myself. There wasn't much option other than to let the hot water system drain out through the hole, but to stop the header tank continually refilling, I had to climb up into the loft crawl space and disarm the header tank ballcock. Armed with a torch and a bit of string, I climbed, crawled, and tied up the ballcock. The water took hours to drain, but we managed to get most of into buckets although the floor and rugs still got a soaking. That was the end of hot water on tap in the cottage, so had to resort to boiling water on the cooker for washing.
Talking of washing, I think my laundry schedule deserves some mention here. Obviously without electricity, there was no washing machine. I had brought some washing powder with me, so I was hand washing my clothes in the kitchen sink. I've done this before when on holiday, and have always been annoyed at how hard it is to wring out the water in the clothes before hanging them up to dry. I was very pleased, then, to find a proper old-fashioned mangle in the shed. "This is so 1950s," I thought, as I turned the handle and dragged my wet laundry through the rollers - all I needed was a washboard and my transformation into a red-skinned, raw-handed washerwoman would be complete!
Maybe that's enough back-to-the-earth, wholesome, Good Life nonsense for now. I also went on some more walks with my digital camera, as I haven't entirely renounced the 21st century...
Cleadale, in the north of the island, is the main centre of population, and is nestled at the bottom of some impressive cliffs
Cleadale
I cycled to Cleadale so I could visit the Singing Sands beach - a beach where the sand is supposed to squeak (adjective adjusted for poetic license) underfoot. Having been warned that the singing sand only occurs under the right conditions I was ready to be disappointed, but, after going for a swim, I wandered onto a bit of sand that did indeed emit a squeaky scrape as my feet brushed over it. I even made a video as evidence (Note before clicking the link: it's a 2.1MB AVI file, probably best not viewed with a dial-up connection).
Interesting rock formations at the Singing Sands
Rum from the Singing Sands beach
There was a woodland and gorge near the Lodge that was carpeted with ramsons (wild garlic), which created an incredible effect.
A path down through the ramson 'meadow'
These ramsons were so ubiquitous, they coated the slope of the gorge and even the root stump of a couple of fallen trees.
These ramsons will grow anywhere!
I decided to leave Eigg a little earlier than planned, to sort out my flat in Edinburgh, and so didn't even get round to climbing the Sgurr. Hope to go back at some point this year for some more volunteering and exploring.
Tuesday 25th April - Isle of Eigg
Arrived on Eigg on Saturday 15th April, so have been here a bit over a week now. I'm volunteering for Bob and Norah, who are renovating the old hunting lodge here. They intend to create an environmental education centre that will demonstrate sustainable building techniques and host courses on related subjects. At present, the lodge is barely habitable. There is a lot of dry rot and general degradation. However, they have heating, a little electricity, and all of the plumbing works.
The lodge, which is surrounded by an impressive and interesting collection of trees
One of the things I've been helping with is the installation of three solar panels mounted on a tracker. The tracker orientates the panels towards the sun so as to maximise the electricity produced. With this improvement, there will be a lot more electricity available.
"Gardener's cottage", the volunteer accommodation
I'm staying in a nearby cottage which also used by the Scottish Wildlife Trust (SWT) to house volunteers. It's in a lovely spot, very pretty, but there's no escaping the fact that it is absolutely freezing! Even with the fire going all day, it's still cold, and jumping into an icy sleeping bag is pretty unpleasant. No electricity either, so only gas lights and candles after dark. I'm getting used to it though, and there are some SWT volunteers here for a week too.
The garden area is being cultivated on permaculture principles, with keyhole beds and a lot of fruit trees (over seventy in fact!) have been planted. So I've also been helping out in the garden, and it has neatly turned out that I'm continuing the gardening work I was doing at Jacqui's in Pitnacree. Particularly, at Jacqui's we had planted and germinated various seeds, but hadn't got to the stage where those seedlings are ready to be transplanted into beds in the garden. However, that's what I've ended up doing quite a bit of here - have been planting out brussel sprouts, lettuce, cauliflower and celery, and there's plenty more still to go out. Hopefully, come the autumn, I'll end up somewhere where they're harvesting all of these vegetables, and I can complete the cycle by eating them!
There is no shortage of jobs to be done both on the lodge or in the garden. I've been helping build a compost heap out of old pallets, clearing drainage trenches, washing and drying sheep's fleeces (for use as very environmentally-friendly insulation) and various other things besides.
Enough about work, let's talk about Eigg. What an island! I've barely started to explore, but it is already apparent that it's a beautiful place. As you approach on the ferry, at the southern end of the island, the view is "dominated" (as all the guidebooks put it) by the Sgurr, a huge steep-sided ridge of volcanic rock.
The Sgurr
Last Sunday, which was a fantastic sunny day, I walked around the south part of the island, to a ruined village called Upper Grulin. Great views of the Sgurr and to the south: Ardnamurchan, Muck, Mull and Coll. The ruins are in a breathtaking spot - a green sloping field strewn with enormous boulders.
House-sized boulders at Grulin
I had to continue on, through the nearby Lower Grulin, until I could see Rum.
Lower Grulin
Rum from the southwest tip of Eigg
I'm just getting into birdwatching - it's frustrating visiting these places and knowing that there is an abundance of interesting wildlife and birdlife around, and not being able to identify anything. So on this walk through Grulin I had a borrowed pair of binoculars, and every time I saw something interesting I hit the ground and got the binos out. Fortunately the SWT volunteers staying in the cottage with me were able to help work out what I'd spotted. So the list included wheatears, meadowpipits, hooded crows, greylag geese, a kestrel, and last but very much not least, an eagle. Having binoculars and being able to identify birds brings a new dimension to going out into the countryside - now I can't leave the house with the binos! Some other sitings here include hen harriers, a goldcrest and ravens. Have also seen swallows around the lodge the past few days; lovely little birds.
Very active social life on Eigg - the night I arrived there was a ceilidh, which of course I had to go to. Great night, great band, and although I left just after midnight, it apparently went on until 5am the next morning! Have also had a wee music session with the guitar down at the bar, I'm just about to head out to another one at a nearby house, and there's yet another session lined up tomorrow. The session tomorrow will be with some visiting students from the Centre for Human Ecology.
Busy life, and I've got to chop firewood every day too!