The start of the weekly blogs falls to me (Julia), and I’m sat here looking out onto a very grey, wet shoreline. No beautiful sunset expected tonight!
Rain is not all bad for us though, as for our off grid solution we need water for washing, concreting and more importantly for flushing the loo! So we mustn’t complain, and it certainly hasn’t stopped us from digging today. Looking forward to a warm shower at An Cridhe (the fabulous village hall) this evening.
Over the past 4 days Coll has been sunny, windy, rainy and cold. But its the cold that makes us not want to get out of our cosy bed in the mornings. Poor Tsala (our old dog) is finding it a bit chilly in the static caravan and is very keen to snuggle in every morning. To be perfectly honest the bed isn’t really big enough but seems unkind not to let her!
It’s a rollercoaster of emotions living in our static caravan, pretty stressful at times and hilarious at others. And then there is the weather. Waking up (with not particularly much sleep) to torrential rain and strong winds doesn’t make you want to leap out of bed and put on still damp waterproofs, but we do. Lots of cups of tea warm us up during the day and we have munched our way through lots of digestives. If we weren’t doing the manual labour we’d be the size of buses! Warm showers at An Cridhe are a godsend as are Amazon Prime deliveries. We are ever thankful to Mike and Liz, (our lovely neighbours) for taking in our various parcels. We need to put a waterproof box/letter box at the end of our drive to save them the hassle...maybe we need to do another Amazon Prime order for that! 😂
Everyone we have met so far on Coll has been so lovely and welcoming, everyone stops to wave as you pass them on the road, we have had offerings of delicious home baked bread from Mike and Liz, scrummy lemon cup cakes from Celine and eggs from Rob and Romayne. I will definitely have to either start baking, grow some veggies or raise some chickens to return the favours! Our neighbours have 2 geese called Harry and Meghan - the names just make me chuckle, especially as the other day I got a WhatsApp to say Meghan had laid 2 eggs!
So how has our project progressed, I hear you asking ....
Last week we had various deliveries including a mountain of sand, to be used over the hardcore, under the DPC (damp proof course) for the shed foundations. And we put up the H&S signs on our gate.
We started digging our first “pier” (cement pillar for the shed, of which there are 8) - all a bit fraught - dig, measure, dig, measure, build a dam to stop the water, bail out the water, measure, fill with hardcore, stamp, measure, add more, stamp, measure, put in the shutter form, add sand, DPC etc etc... Then we had a bit of a break as our neighbour Mike came to get some topsoil, but also to bring us a lovely loaf of home baked bread!
The Form for the first pier.
We completed 2 piers, but concreting has had its issues. It started when we found that our first pier hole was full of water! So we had to remove that. Then measuring the concrete quantities was interesting as the mixer only held 1/2 bag of cement. And it didn’t stop there. We began mixing and on our second pour the cement mixer followed the cement into the hole!! OMG. Sorry John! Our first entry in the H&S “near miss” log. Thankfully Digby (our newly renamed Digger) came to the rescue and the mixer was land based again. The final concreting lesson we learnt is not to dig your hole too big - as it means you have to pour more concrete and it took us far longer than it should have! The third pier will be perfect!
Mahoosive OOPS!
A great win for Scotland in the rugby put us in a fab mood and we continued with the shed foundations. The shuttering form took a bit of time to remove (removing screws and chiselling) but resulted in a perfect square! When trying to remove it with the digger we only had one broken piece of wire and one broken strap. Result. Thank goodness for Digby!
On the fashion front 😂, our bib and brace waterproofs and safety wellies are fantastic, though my matching Primark jacket is not completely waterproof. Gloves are also essential, but everything is getting muddy and taking forever to dry! Luckily we have many many pairs. Once layered up, and looking a bit like Michelin Men we are nice and warm for the outdoor work, but still hoping for some nicer weather. Wednesday is looking good. Currently, the ground is getting boggier by the day and we don’t want to get Digby stuck! Fingers crossed for next week.
My gloves inside gloves.
Keiths all singing and dancing gloves.
The shower.....or rather the “drying“ (if only) room.
Well done you two. Loving your blog!
You're definitely having an adventure. And what about all those different kinds of weather within 4 days...I thought you were in Scotland, isn't that what you normally get within 4 hours?
Keep having fun, and remember to try not to kill Keith...he means well🤣🤣
Looks like lotsa fun!!!