The weather has been shockingly bad again. Sunday was dreadful, almost 24 hours of non stop rain. We had a lovely roast dinner, assumed Tom would not attempt to walk back in the rain, not least because after such rainfall the river are in spate and utterly unsafe to cross so your previous route may no longer exist.
Ady went out to feed the animals and the sun briefly came out and the rain stopped, I had a message from Jed to say Tom had returned after all, having fallen and hurt his ankle but was ok and would be staying in the village that night. Later I had multiple phonecalls and messages from Claire to more or less say the same thing but with added drama :rolls: Â It turns out he had indeed tried to cross a river, fallen in, been carried along for a short way before shedding his rucksack and managing to scramble out. He lost his rucksack (clothes, wallet (who takes their wallet walking in the hills?!), sleeping bag, stove), hurt his knee, ankle, banged his head and cut above his eye. Folk in the village are taking pity on him, we are a little irritated as his vagueness to be honest. We caught up with him the following day and I bought him a beer, checked whether he needed food, clothes, anything else and arranged to see him when he is feeling up to coming back up.
Monday was meetingtastic for me = directors meeting and then a meeting with Ali and Trudi the ranger to talk about the fact she has failed to win more funding to continue her post so frankly should be on the next ferry off Rum! She is good at her rangering part of the job but when we took her on nearly a year ago we made it clear that part of the post was getting further funding and she was just really slack about making that happen, assumed she would get continued funding from a previous funder, faffed with the grant application and then had it turned down. So serious chat time as really she should be out of a job. We want to carry on with the ranger programme for the season as we have advertised it but she needs to appreciate that she has to justify her wages every single month as the trust is now paying and we can’t really afford to do so. So firm words and some straight talking which Ali was really not happy to do alone.
Back home, via seeing Bad Neil for a chat, helped Ady fix the fencing around the duck as it was blowing all over the place and then back down for a beer and to collect veg. I’d done some mending clothes in the morning too. I like doing that, it makes me feel very survival-y. Not enough to want to do kentwell or anything though… 😉
Today it has continued to rain mostly. It was very windy so plenty of scope for power, I did loads of baking – bread, rolls, cookies, four layers of birthday cake, jelly for the base layer of a trifle, granola. Ady did some maintenance on the flushing loo which has various teething problems – deeply unpleasant and another reason why I love him so much – I could not do that!
I take it tom was expected to stay at a bothy? Bit confused!
Comment by Mich — 13 May 2015 @ 10:45 am
Do you mean while out walking? Yeah, he left his tent, took his mat and sleeping bag intending to sleep in one of the two bothies on the island (one at Dibidil, one at Guirdil). Back in the village he slept at the Bunkhouse for a couple of nights, had one night back in the tent, has been on someone’s sofa for at least one night and I have now lost track of where he is and what he’s doing!
Comment by Nic — 17 May 2015 @ 7:31 pm