A Winter's Tale

We have now been in the first phase of our home for 1 month busily painting and decorating. Unfortunately, we have had no time to explore the area around us. We did, however go up to the North East coast and looked at the small fishing towns of Banff and McDuff.

This is Banff viewed across with bay with a choppy sea and a view of the town

Little did we know that the storm would develop later that day into the worst for decades and feature on the front page of the newspaper!

The picture above is of the neighbouring town of McDuff which also was affected by the gale.

The dogs like the fire! They have adapted very well to the snow and ice. Quite amazing really

We are not settled yet and chaos still reigns while we paint. We still have furniture stored in the stables, but have taken in as many pieces as we can so we will not get the rooms sorted out until we move into the rest of the house

This is a view of the Drawing Room

Dining Room

Kitchen

Guest Bedroom 3 which we are using

The garage roof is now on ready for slating. the first picture is taken inside the courtyard and the other on the West face (this is the original farmhouse facade before it was extended and converted to a Victorian hunting and fishing lodge)

We were lucky to be given a brace of pheasants which Paula prepared.Our first. Thank you Nicola

On the 3rd December we had nice fluffy snow and we took these pictures.

View from front of house

View of side garden

View over the river towards the small town of Rothes

View down our access road

A strange thing here is how many householders go quite beserk decorating their homes with Christmas lights! There is a massive rivalry to outdo your neighbour. Look at this one on the main street in Rothes!

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

We have had a few setbacks with poor deliveries of the timber cooker and boiler etc which has delayed our getting into the house. Rather than continue to stress, we are working hard to resolve all issues and expect to be in a week's time - hold thumbs!

Paula and I are painting like mad and have had almost no time to go sightseeing, so I thought that you might like the pictures of the Autumnal scene with the leaves changing along our road.

The above two pictures are on Grantown High Street which is South of us in the Cairngorms; famous for skiiing and fishing

Fairy tale lodge to Ballindalloch Castle

The Scottish dialect, particularly along the North coastal towns is so strong, that not even other Scots can fully understand them! I particularly struggle on the phone! I thought you might be interested to hear a sanitised version (imagine him speaking more gutterally at high speed) - Please click on the link below :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxAdpQ5-pXA&feature=related

Last of the Summer Wine

We have been really busy this month as it is our intention to move into part of the house by the end of October and the pressure is on............... The place has been swarming with Joiners, Heating and Plumbing Engineers and Electricians.

We thought we would show you what we have been doing in pictures. Our Blog has been viewed over 1,000 times so somebody must like it!

We have chiselled off the lime plaster off the front and also the lime harling (plaster) off the West side.

 Detail

Heating is serious here and the gridlock of pipes is incredible!

We are trying to clear up the dead wood. It is helping us build up our wood stock.

This is a fraction of the pile of vegetation that we are burning to clear the grounds.

The new Guest entrance road which we put back through the trees is now settling down and is now usable (even if a bit rough)

Paula's Crocuses in her new bank are still holding up.

Paula has started clearing a second patch near the North wall - quite a struggle.

The Stable block is coming along 

The internal walls and partitions are now being installed. The builders have a sense of humour as you can see from the skylight that has been installed in the slated roof.

We have managed to buy old Victorian doors. 

We also bought a pair of double entrance doors from Aberdeen and a Georgian fanlight from Elgin. They will become our new front door - at the moment they have been photographed lying on the ground!

Paula now has all mod-cons - a washing machine in the outside toilet! It works well, even if unconventional!

Our Stonemason, Paul Westmacott, restored a farmhouse for a friend of ours about 10 years ago - they built an effigy of him in an outside wall!

Summer is over and this month has been the wettest in 30 years (we really have had records broken this year). Scotland boasts having 75% of all the Heather in the world. The plants are tiny, but the Tweedy colour is most beautiful, if not abundant.

Here is a montage picture of the Spey Valley as seen from our caravan.

We are lucky to get this picture of a huge Salmon caught in 1895. What is important is that it was taken on the original front steps of our house. See the note on the back :

The town of Aberlour a few miles away celebrated it's 200th Anniversary last weekend. As with a small towns, the main road goes through the town. Here is a picture of the main road with the town Square.

We have been asked for pictures of surrounding places. This is the town of Cullen on the North East coast. These fishing villages are very quaint, but the Scots here have such a broad dialect that we have the utmost difficulty in understanding some of them! The Viaduct which goes around the town can be seen behind the houses.

Cullen's Main Road goes down to the sea - one can see the Viaduct. The town square on the righthand picture.

Hold on! We are doing everything possible to move in by the end of October - we hope to put out some pictures then.