I hate getting up with the alarm. I do wonder if all of our choices to this point are infact a really elaborate way of me avoiding getting up for work in the morning… home ed, traveling, moving to a remote island and getting a croft… 😉 mostly it works! 😆
We were on our way by 7am again this morning, breakfasting in the car and listening to Chris Evans on our way to Mallaig. Our rather old and tired with no updates for about 7 years satnav thinks the road to Mallaig takes about an hour longer from Fort William than it actually does, which gave us a heart attack last time we went but we were ready for it this time and when it suddenly lost a whole hour of it’s estimated arrival time we were expecting it. I’d allowed a buffer of an hour though and we did use half of that extra hour.
Once on the ferry the chef bustled over to say ‘have I remembered you right – the family moving to Rum?’ to which we replied she had and she produced today’s newspaper with a little article on page 3 about us 🙂
” alt=”” />
Greatly amusing 🙂 To be recognised, to have the article shown to us and the wildly inaccurate reporting on our past lives 🙂
Lots of the village were there to greet the ferry, a van had arrived on it with various parcels. We said some hellos but left everyone to it and headed off for the croft. Vikki caught us up on her bike and we had a quick chat before Fliss pulled up alongside us and offered a lift in her car which we accepted given our tight schedule so she dropped us off close to the edge of the croft and offered a lift back to the ferry later too.
We walked up along the very top of the crofts then down, wanting to work out various things including precise location of waterfall – it’s not on our land, just off to the side, visible and audible from the croft but not technically on it. We’ll need to check with SNH about usage for water and power but are hopeful (and Vikki is too) that they will be receptive to us making use of the water. There is a rather clogged up stream on the croft which once cleared will probably run quite freely which will also provide water and possibly power too.
The land is looking good, not too boggy given it’s the wettest it will probably be after such a wet winter and rainy February. It is not as reedy as we’d feared and even has some bits that are grassy :). The crofts have a perimeter fence but no divide between 2 and 3 but it’s fairly easy to work out where one ends and the other starts. The views towards the sea are fairly restricted but as we got closer to the bottom we decided the river view is the better one to plan to build near – it runs very fast just below the croft land, twisting and turning and has a rich wildlife including otters, so that’s the place to be looking out over we reckon 🙂
” alt=”” />
We had a fairly rubbish attempt at skypeing with Babs and Kirsty, the signal wasn’t great so they were getting a series of stills rather than video clips but we could see all their faces grouped together on Ady’s phone so they have the honour of being our first friends on the croft 🙂
We then walked the access track back to the village with Ady getting lots of photos. Currently where the track crosses the ford it is flooded with the depth of the river. It’s over welly level but no more than a foot deep, it would be fine for a vehicle and will subside over the coming weeks anyway. Vikki joined us at that point. She is very positive about the help we should get from the rest of the community and made us feel the same. It all feels achieveable – challenging, but achieveable (unlike spelling achieveable! Do other people have one set of words they happily use in speech because they can pronounce them but are never sure of the spelling and another set they are confident of writing down and getting correct but would wobble over the right way to say them out loud?)
We had a brief chat with Sean who also interviewed us, caught up with Steve who gave us the earthship dvds and promises a load more stuff like books :), met Clare the other yurt dweller, Reece (not sure what he does but we’d heard nice things about him), waved at Norman, had a quick hello with Neil the other crofter and then Fliss gave us another lift back to the pier. Definitely felt at home and part of the community 🙂 🙂 🙂
That about took us to time to be getting back so we returned to the ferry and came back to the mainland again. Another 100 miles drive back to Inverness, via two Coops and Tescos for various cheap food – this time a fiver for breakfast tomorrow, dinner tonight and enough top up food to last til we leave 🙂 I get lunch at the course and we’re all going for dinner tomorrow night with the rest of the course attendees – Ady and kids inlcuded to try and make some contacts. Financial crisis thanks to additional unforeseen petrol, ferry and food purchasings (we should have been WWOOFing on Eigg spending nothing!) has meant an emergency phonecall to Dad who is topping up our funds from afar tomorrow so we can get petrol to drive south again on Saturday night. Sigh.
Finally back at the Travelodge we ate, were slightly surprised to realise tea, coffee, clean towels and loo roll supplies had been topped up in the room. Thankfully Humphrey is secreted over by the kids beds with bags infront of him.
A hot chocolate laced with brandy (emergency rations brought from home, needed this evening for positively medicinal purposes) brings me more than ready for bed. Course tomorrow 🙂