The first quiet day for a while!

 Nick feeds Bertie and his little band and since Jenny has been cuddling the hens they chase us round the garden!

Spot the heron watching the seal chase the swan!

Sometimes on Islay it freezes just as the sun is rising... 

We received in the post, a lovely apple tree from friends in Poole and now we have to stop the deer eating it until it is over their heads! If we put a fence round it maybe we might stop the decapitating some daffodils in March too!

...and of course the sun rose again this morning! 

It's very quiet in the Dower House..

...and nothing is stirring...

...except for the mice!

Mary-Ann

Back from our travels with a "Little Red Trailer"

There was a moderate threat in Dorset to ride the motorbike to Islay.......so

With help from Bob (not the first time) and a tip off from another friend, we found the Little Red Trailer on e-bay......bid at the last minute, almost against our friends, who are storing our furniture.........and went 6 miles to Gillingham to fetch it!

Friday morning it had a new bottom and working lights, thanks to Bob and Mark, was loaded and ready to go.....

Back at the Dower House someone wanted Bertie's ruff for fishing! Not a chance, his wives are laying eggs now.

 Katie's last stand! 

Pointing, chimney flues and cold feet have filled her days, her hair and clothes for too long. Roll on an Australian Christmas!

 Goat at Singing Sands on one of our walks.

Nick was forced to leave the Dower House and all it's thought provoking problems for a few days at Topsy's, before everyone went mad! 

....back at the Dower House...

Why is it when Bob comes we always get filthy?

....and while Katie and Dan are packing.....

Nick's up the chimney again looking for a flue.....

Is that the end we see?

.....and in another another chimney upstairs a smaller person catches a flue as it lands.....

Got it!

That bit of flue took Katie a long time to secure and she will be pleased to know that we ordered 58 metres of flue today and saved a lot of money due to her perseverance.

Unfortunately I collected the wrong chimney cap from Buildbase...so Jenny, wanting to ride her bike offered to take it back.  Mark sorted the fuel out.....but just as we were thinking the breaking down was over....

She got a great big Blackthorn in her tyre, just outside Port Ellen Bob and Mark to the rescue they took her & bike to Buildbase. 

Thanks to Michael from Buildbase, who stopped and would have put the bike in a sling and taken her in the lorry if the cavalry hadn't been on their way!

Bob and Mark made it to the top of the Fairy Hill and saw......

3 Golden Eagles.....

The Dower House From The Top Of The Fairy Hill

Bob's Big Fish!

Some of Mark's photos on Jan's camera

...and this one's my November Sunrise.....

Life On Islay is amazing....still!

Thanks Everyone who has and is helping us, particularly Katie and Dan for November as they kept the show on the road and food on the table for Nick and Rick while I was gone! They are off to Australia for a month, Bob and Mark took them South.

We are now down to 3 of us as Jenny left today as well, but will be back on the 12th to see the Reindeer in Bowmore...I hope they're worth it!

Mary-Ann

P.S. Dorset is beautiful too, but it makes my head buzz!

Photo Update-Autumn and the Roof

I took these photos of Saligo Bay just before I left at the beginning of October.

We haven't been to Sailigo Bay since I was really little, because it's always pretty rough and Mum has horrible memories of worrying about us getting swept away! We also used to walk down by the river, which is pretty difficult with 2 young children. The walk over the dunes and past the horses is far nicer.

An eagle over the fairy hill.

I was trying to take a nice photo of Islay before I left....

We have a new baby belling! All ready for Christmas dinner.

The seaward side of the new roof.

The Spanish slate on the dormers at the back. 

We still have quite a lot of slates...

The roadside with hebridean slate on the dormers.

After much deliberation we eventually decided to go with a tin ridge. We originally wanted to go for a dry ridge system, but the angle of the dormers and the top ridge is 90 degrees, which is very unusual and therefore we were unable to buy the dry ridge system.

I've been making a few modifications to the chicken hut, with Mark, Bob's son in law, as it was leaking quite badly in places.

One of the windows at the back. they don't have strips down the middle as we wanted the view to be clear as it is so spectacular.

A front window.

Bob's bit of pointing on the seaward side.

The newly finished end.

The scaffolding is finally clear!

                                                                                                                 ~Jenny

The roof is finished... sort of

Well, firstly I should probably apologise for killing the dog... sorry Jenny. I'm trying to catch you a deer so you can put that on a lead and walk it around instead. I just need to practice my lassoing technique a little...

In better news, the roof is sort of finished. Hooray! Well, the main bit of the roof is finished anyway, so the scaffolding can come down as soon as we've sorted out a number of other things such as chimney linings and guttering. Here is Dad wearing that hat again...

Unfortunately we are still 'dressing' slates (I'm not convinced this job will ever truly end) as the weather is 'fine' and they're be needed for the porch and end sheds...

...and wearing more stupid hats.

I think we're going to need to invest in a few more stupid hats looking at the weather forecast.

You'll be pleased to know that Mum is back on Saturday, so this will be it from me. Someone might actually tell you something useful next week. 

Bye!

Katie xx